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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, celery, tomatoes, ham bone, beans, onion, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans 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 ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, boil the beef, celery, tomatoes, and ham bone in 4 quarts of water.

Add the vegetables and thicken

  1. Parboil the beans in a separate pot, then strain and add them to the soup.

  2. Slice the onion and brown it in the butter, then add it to the soup.

  3. In the same butter, brown the flour and stir it into the soup.

Finish cooking

  1. Let the soup cook for 5 hours.

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. Tomato + beanstop 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 + beanstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 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

Beef
Provides rich meaty flavor and body as it simmers into the broth.
Beans
Add starchy body and texture, becoming tender during the long simmer.
Butter
Carries the onion and flour, adding richness and helping them brown for flavor.
Flour
Browned in butter and stirred in, it thickens the soup slightly.
Onion
Browned in butter, it adds sweetness and savory depth.
Ham bone
Releases salty, smoky flavor into the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour browned too quickly or too little can taste raw or burnt, and stirring it in unevenly leaves lumps. Cooking it gently until golden and whisking it into the soup helps it thicken smoothly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, ham, beans, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, ham, beans, onion, butter, 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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