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Soup

Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with meat stock, white beans, potatoes, salt, pepper, and thickened with flour or corn flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 655 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pan.

  2. Boil slowly for five hours.

Strain and thicken

  1. Press through a sieve or colander.

  2. Thicken with a little flour or corn flour.

  3. Bring to a boiling point and boil for five 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 + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Starchy body that softens during long simmering and, once pressed, gives the soup its texture.
Potatoes
Starch that breaks down during long boiling, adding body to the soup.
Meat stock
Liquid base that carries the savoury flavour of the soup.
Flour or corn flour
Starch that swells in hot liquid to thicken the soup further.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour, then boil for five minutes. Starch must be fully heated to swell and thicken the liquid, and boiling it briefly cooks out the raw floury taste. Stirring in the flour before boiling helps prevent lumps.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, beans, pepper, flour):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, beans, pepper, flour. 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.

More bean soup recipes

Black 138Haricot 45White 36Baked 31Turtle 22Lima 16 See all 179 →

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