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Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with dried white beans, lean beef, bacon, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried white beans overnight.

  2. Cut the beef into pieces and place in a soup pot with the bones, broken into pieces.

  3. Add the bacon, cut into small pieces, and season with pepper.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in 6 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any scum, then drain the soaked beans and add them to the pot.

  3. Add the chopped celery or celery seed.

  4. Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved.

Serve

  1. Strain the soup into a tureen and add small squares of toasted bread.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 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

Dried white beans
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lean fresh beef
Becomes tender during slow boiling and adds meaty flavor to the broth.
Lean bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat that flavors the broth as it simmers.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetable flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the meat break down slowly into tender meat, while a hard boil can toughen the meat and break the beans unevenly. Long, slow cooking is what lets the beans soften fully and thicken the broth.

“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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