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Butter Bean Soup

A soup made with butter beans, onions, milk, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Butter Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the soaked butter beans and onions with boiling water.

  2. Cook until the beans are tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve back into the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the milk, season with pepper and salt, and serve very hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter beans
Provide the main body and thick, creamy texture when cooked and sieved.
Onions
Add savory aromatic flavor as they soften in the cooking liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and a smoother, mellower body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cook until the beans are tender. Beans must be fully softened before sieving, because undercooked beans stay firm and grainy and will not purée into a smooth soup.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Soybeanfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, onion, 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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