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Brown Haricot Soup

A hearty soup made with brown haricot beans, onions, carrot, and seasoned with browning, mushroom ketchup, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,443 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Brown Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the brown haricot beans overnight.

Cook and strain

  1. In a large pot, combine the soaked beans, boiling water, onions, and carrot.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and pass it through a sieve.

Season and serve

  1. Stir in the browning, mushroom ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add more boiling water if needed.

  3. Serve with snippets of toast or granose flakes.

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 + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown haricot beans
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup as they break down.
Spanish onions
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic flavour as they soften during long boiling.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. Dried haricot beans need a long, steady boil to soften fully; if they stay firm, the soup will taste grainy and the sieved texture will be uneven.

“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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