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Haricot Bean Soup

A simple bean soup with haricot beans, vegetables, dried sage, ham or pork, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In a pot, add the soaked beans and cover them with cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Add your choice of vegetables and dried sage.

  2. Flavor with ham or pork, then season with pepper and salt.

  3. Strain the soup before serving.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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 + sagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 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

Haricot beans
Starchy body that thickens the soup as it cooks.
Ham or pork
Adds savory, fatty flavor that carries through the broth.
Dried sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic herb flavor.

The step that matters

Soak the beans overnight. Dried beans need time to absorb water before cooking. Soaking softens them so they cook evenly and become tender, rather than staying firm in the centre.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, sage, ham, 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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