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String-bean Soup

A soup of string beans flavored with salt, raw peanut cream, and thickened with grated zwieback.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

String-bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Wash the string beans thoroughly.

  2. Cook the string beans in boiling salted water until tender.

  3. Rub the cooked beans through a colander.

  4. Return the strained beans to the stove.

Season and thicken

  1. Season with salt and raw peanut cream to taste.

  2. Thicken the soup by adding finely grated zwieback.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beans + peanuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Peanut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Beans + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the main body of the soup and, once puréed, its texture and flavour.
Zwieback
Absorbs liquid and thickens the soup as it is stirred in.
Raw peanut cream
Adds richness and body through its fat, giving the soup a creamier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Thickening with zwieback. Grated zwieback is a dry, starchy bread that swells as it absorbs hot liquid. Added in too large an amount or left too long, it can make the soup pasty, so add it gradually and let it hydrate before judging the consistency.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peanut, cream):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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