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Bean Soup

A simple bean soup made with soaked beans, water, butter, salt, pepper, and sugar, served hot with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Drain the soaked beans and place them in a pot with 3 pints of fresh water.

  2. Simmer the beans until soft, ensuring there is always 3 pints of water in the pot.

  3. Rub the mixture through a strainer and add water to achieve desired thickness.

  4. Stir in the butter and bring to a boil.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with croutons.

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

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Form the body of the soup, thickening it as they soften and break down.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that balances the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the water level topped up while simmering. Beans simmered in too little liquid can scorch on the bottom of the pot and cook unevenly. Keeping the volume constant ensures they soften fully and purée into a consistent soup.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar. 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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