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Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from dried beans, salt pork or ham, and seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and a pinch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans and soak them overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and cover them with boiling water.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the pork and boil gently for 2 hours.

  2. Press the beans through a sieve and return them to the soup kettle.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Add salt, pepper, butter, and a pinch of sugar.

  5. Serve with 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (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 + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it once pressed through a sieve.
Salt pork or ham
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour to the cooking liquid as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Press the beans through a sieve. Pressing cooked beans breaks down their starch-rich cell walls, which thickens the soup and gives it a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the soup thin and grainy.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, butter, sugar, bread. 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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