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White Bean Soup

A hearty soup of navy beans, vegetables, pork, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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White Bean Soup

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

White Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the navy beans overnight.

Simmer

  1. In a large pot, combine the soaked beans, water, sautéed onions, carrot, partly boiled potatoes, pork, red pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for 5 to 6 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Add 1 quart of stock and strain through a colander.

  2. Return the pulp to the pot, season with salt and pepper.

  3. Place diced bread in a tureen and pour the soup over it.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

  5. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Navy beans
Provide the main body and thickness of the soup as they break down during long simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they build flavour in the base.
Potatoes
Break down partly during cooking to add starch and help thicken the soup.
Pork
Adds meaty richness and savory flavour to the broth.
Bread
Soaks up the soup in the tureen, adding soft texture and body to each serving.

The step that matters

Simmering for 5 to 6 hours. Dried navy beans need a long, gentle simmer to become fully tender; a hard boil can break the skins and cloud the broth, while stopping early leaves the beans firm and grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, potato, pork, pepper, bread. 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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