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Bean Soup

A simple bean soup with salt pork, onion, flour, and spices, served with toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the beans in water with the piece of salt pork until nearly done.

  2. Add the minced onion, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Strain the soup and serve with warmed toast or crackers.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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

Beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they soften and break down during cooking.
Salt pork
Adds savory, fatty flavor to the cooking water as it renders into the soup.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly by binding to the liquid as it heats.

The step that matters

Add the flour with the onion and seasonings. Flour clumps if stirred straight into hot liquid. Mixing it with a little cold water or the onion first helps it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, flour, 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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