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Portsmouth Bean Soup

A hearty soup of beans, salt pork, beef, carrot, onion, eggs, lemon, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Portsmouth Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Chop the beef and salt pork.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil the beans with the beef, pork, carrot, and onion for five hours.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the eggs, salt, pepper, and sliced lemon to the strained soup.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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

Round beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they soften during the long boil.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and depth of flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Eggs
Enrich the soup and help thicken it when gently cooked into the hot liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, starchy broth.

The step that matters

Add the eggs to the strained soup. Eggs set when heated, so they can curdle or turn grainy if the soup is at a hard boil or they are added too quickly. Stirring them into hot but not boiling soup keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, beans, carrot, onion, egg, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beans, carrot, onion, egg, 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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