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Soup

Cream of Beans

A creamy bean soup made with hulled beans, milk, egg, olive oil, salt, cayenne pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,470 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream of Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the beans until soft and mushy.

  2. Mash the beans through a sieve.

  3. Add the milk, beaten egg, olive oil, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Return to the fire and bring to a boil.

  5. For a firmer soup, retain 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Thicken and finish

  1. Brown the flour in a saucepan and smooth it with part of the soup.

  2. Pour the flour mixture back into the soup and allow it to boil together.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 give it its thick, mashed texture.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind and thicken the soup as it heats.
Flour
Thickens the soup once browned and cooked into the liquid.
Milk
Supplies the liquid base and creamy body of the soup.
Olive oil
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pour the flour mixture back into the soup and allow it to boil together. Flour thickens only when its starch gelatinizes in hot liquid. Stirring it in smoothly and letting it boil ensures the soup thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, olive, pepper, flour):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, olive, pepper, flour. 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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