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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beans, pork, thyme, hard‑boiled eggs, lemon, butter, and optional beef or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Place the beans in a kettle and cover with water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in the baking soda and let boil for a moment.

  3. Drain the water, add fresh water and the piece of pork, and cook until the beans are tender.

  4. Remove the beans and press them through a colander into the cooking water.

Season and finish

  1. Tie the thyme in a small bag and add it to the pot to simmer for a few minutes.

  2. Add the quartered hard-boiled eggs, sliced lemon, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. For added flavor, include a piece of fresh raw beef until cooked through, or substitute with rich milk.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Beans + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 once cooked and pressed through a colander.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping the beans soften.
Pork
Adds savory meaty flavor to the cooking water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Pressing the beans through a colander. Pressing cooked beans breaks down their starchy cell walls so they blend into a smooth, thickened soup rather than staying grainy. Beans must be fully tender first, since firm beans resist pressing and give a coarse texture.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, thyme, egg, lemon, butter, pepper, beef):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, thyme, egg, lemon, butter, pepper, beef. 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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