Skip to main content
Main

Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with white beans, pork or bacon, onion, tomato ketchup or chili sauce, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the white beans with the pork or bacon and onion until done, adding water as needed.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Stir in the tomato ketchup or chili sauce.

Make the roux and finish

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan.

  2. Mix in the flour to create a roux.

  3. Add the roux to the soup and stir until well combined.

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 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

White beans
Form the body of the soup and give it its main substance as they cook until tender.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter as a roux and stirred into the liquid.
Butter
Carries the flour in the roux, adding richness and helping the flour thicken smoothly.
Tomato ketchup or chili sauce
Adds sweetness, acidity and color to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the roux to the soup. Flour clumps if it is added raw or dumped in at once. Cooking it briefly in butter first and stirring it into the hot soup helps it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, tomato, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes