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Baked Bean Soup

A baked soup of white beans simmered with tapioca, thyme, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 488 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Baked Bean Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the white beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in an earthen dish with boiling water.

  3. Cover and simmer in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 4 to 5 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Soak the pearl tapioca in enough water to cover overnight.

  2. When the beans are soft, rub them through a colander.

  3. Add the soaked tapioca, salt, and powdered thyme.

  4. If the water has mostly evaporated, add enough water to achieve the desired consistency.

  5. Return to the oven and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

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 + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, thickening into a smooth purée once rubbed through a colander.
Pearl tapioca
Thickens the soup as its starch gelatinizes during long, moist cooking.

The step that matters

Rub the beans through a colander. Beans must be fully soft before straining, since firm beans will not pass through and give a smooth, even body to the soup.

“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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