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Economical Soup

A simple bone broth soup with beans, tomato, potatoes, carrot, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Economical Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Save bones and trimmings from roasts and steaks for 2-3 days.

  2. Put bones and trimmings in a kettle with water and bring to a gentle boil.

  3. Add beans and tomato, and simmer until an hour before dinner.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander and return it to the kettle.

Finish the soup

  1. Add sliced potatoes, grated carrot, salt, pepper, and chopped pot-herbs.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it with flour until smooth.

  3. Stir the egg and flour mixture into the soup in small crumbs.

  4. Let the soup boil for 10 minutes and serve.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Potato + carrottop 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. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Beans
Add body and substance, thickening the soup as they soften in the simmering liquid.
Tomato
Adds acidity and savory depth to the broth as it cooks down.
Potatoes
Release starch as they cook, giving the soup body and a heartier texture.
Egg
Sets when it hits the hot soup, forming soft, tender crumbs that enrich the broth.
Flour
Combines with the egg to form dumpling-like crumbs that hold their shape in the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg and flour mixture into the soup. Adding the batter in small crumbs, rather than all at once, lets the egg set into separate pieces instead of clumping into a single mass. The soup should be kept at a boil so the crumbs cook through.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, potato, carrot, pepper, egg, 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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