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Butter Bean Soup

A soup made with butter beans, water, onion, carrot, celery, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Butter Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine soaked butter beans and water.

  2. Add chopped onion, diced carrot, and diced celery.

  3. Cook until all vegetables are tender, adding water as needed.

  4. Rub the cooked vegetables through a sieve back into the saucepan.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add butter.

  6. Bring the soup to a boil and 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter beans
Provide starch and body, thickening the soup as they break down when cooked and sieved.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup once cooked and pushed through a sieve.
Celery
Adds aroma and savoury flavour, and contributes body once cooked and sieved.
Onion
Builds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred into the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked vegetables through a sieve. Pushing the soft vegetables and beans through a sieve breaks down their cell walls, which thickens the soup and gives it a smooth texture. Leaving lumps or skipping this step leaves the soup thin and gritty.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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