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Baked Bean Soup

A soup made from baked beans, water, onion, celery, tomatoes, chili sauce, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

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 ↓

Baked Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine baked beans, water, onion, and celery in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a bowl.

  4. Add the strained tomatoes and chili sauce to the bowl.

Thicken and season

  1. Combine butter and flour in a separate pan and cook until smooth.

  2. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the soup.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Form the body of the soup and, once sieved, give it a thick, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when cooked with flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and stirred in.
Stewed and strained tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, tangy flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour until smooth. Flour must be cooked in fat so its starch can swell evenly without lumps; stirring it into hot soup while still raw can leave lumps and a pasty taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, tomato, butter, flour, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, tomato, butter, flour, sauce, pepper. 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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