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Baked Bean Soup

A soup made from cold beans, onion, cloves, water, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with hard‑boiled eggs, lemon, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stew pan, combine cold beans, onion, and whole cloves.

  2. Cover with cold water and boil until soft.

  3. Press the mixture through a strainer and return to the stove.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, add sliced hard-boiled eggs and thinly sliced lemon.

  2. For a thinner soup, omit lemon and eggs, and use hot milk instead.

  3. Serve with toast cut into small squares.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Break down into a thick, creamy body when boiled and pressed.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add substance and mild richness as a garnish stirred into the soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Boil until soft, then press through a strainer. Beans must be fully tender before pressing, since firm beans will not break down into a smooth purée and the soup will stay grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, clove, pepper, egg, lemon. 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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