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Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked white beans, bacon, a soup bone, onion, bay leaves, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the beans with cold water and soak overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and place them in a soup kettle with the bacon and soup bone.

Cook and purée

  1. Add 2 quarts of water and simmer gently until the beans are tender, about 1.5 hours.

  2. Press the mixture through a puree sieve and return it to the kettle.

  3. Add enough water to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  4. Bring to a boil and season.

Serve

  1. Serve with croutons.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

White soup beans
Form the body of the soup, thickening into a creamy purée when pressed.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour that carries through the broth.
Soup bone
Contributes savoury depth and body to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury backbone as it softens in the soup.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans until fully tender. Beans must be fully softened before puréeing; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not press through the sieve smoothly, and gentle simmering prevents skins from breaking apart and clouding the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper. 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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