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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with salt pork, beans, potatoes, carrot, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Combine salt pork and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the beans and baking soda.

  4. Boil until the hulls easily slip off.

  5. Remove the beans and place them in cold water.

  6. Rub the beans with your hands to remove the hulls.

  7. Drain the beans and repeat until all hulls are removed.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the beans to the pot with the pork.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, thyme, diced potatoes, and grated carrot.

  3. Serve the soup with pieces of toast in a tureen.

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. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Baking soda
Helps loosen the bean hulls so they slip off after boiling.
Potatoes
Add starch that gives the soup more body as they cook.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and color to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil until the hulls easily slip off. Underboiled beans keep their hulls and resist rubbing free, while overboiling can break the beans apart. Checking that the hulls loosen easily tells you when the beans are ready for hulling.

“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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