Name: Bean or Pea Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint of beans or peas; 2 quarts of stock; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 small onion; 3 onions, chopped fine; flour (for thickening); thyme to taste; a little mace

Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bean or Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans or peas

Soak the beans or peas overnight.
Boil the soaked beans or peas until soft.

Make the soup

Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little onion.
Strain the broth from the boiled beans or peas.
Add the strained beans or peas to the broth.
Boil the chopped onions in the broth.
Mix a little flour with the boiled beans and add to the soup.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, thyme, and a little mace.

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.

Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + thymetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together488 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 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 or peas: Form the body of the soup, thickening it as they break down when boiled.
Stock: Provides the liquid base and savory flavor of the soup.
Onions: Add aromatic flavor and sweetness to the broth as they cook.
Flour: Thickens the soup, giving it a fuller body.

Swap the mace

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

Cuminfits better
Marjoramfits better
Parsleyfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, onion, flour, thyme. 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.