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Meatless Bean Soup

A bean soup made with beans, water, pepper, salt, butter, cream or milk, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Meatless Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Parboil the beans in fresh water until perfectly tender.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Season the beans with pepper and coarse sea salt, and add butter.

  4. Skim out half the beans, leaving the broth with the remaining half in the kettle.

Finish and serve

  1. Add sweet cream or milk and broken crackers.

  2. Let it boil.

  3. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provide the main body and substance of the soup once cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the broth a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Sweet cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, softening the broth's flavor and texture.
Crackers
Absorb liquid and thicken the soup as they break down during boiling.

The step that matters

Let it boil. Once the cream or milk is added, boiling can curdle dairy or scorch it on the bottom of the kettle. Stirring and keeping heat controlled helps the soup stay smooth and thickened by the crackers.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, cream. 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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