Skip to main content
Main

Haricot Soup

A bean soup made with haricot beans, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, herbs, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the haricot beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Cut up the vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the soaked beans, chopped vegetables, water, butter, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for 3½ to 4 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. Once the beans are tender, strain the soup through a sieve, adding more water if needed.

  4. Return the soup to the pot, stir in the chopped parsley, and bring to a boil before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup as they cook and break down.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the beans until fully tender. Dried haricot beans need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Undercooked beans stay firm and grainy, and a hard boil can break the skins and cloud the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, butter, pepper. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes