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Soup

Baked Bean Soup

A soup made with baked beans, water, onion, celery, tomatoes, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the baked beans, hot water, onion, celery, and tomatoes together for 20 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Season and thicken

  1. Season with salt and pepper.

  2. Thicken with the butter and flour cooked together.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 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

Baked beans
Provide the main body and starch that give the soup its base texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated with fat and liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and carries the flour so it blends smoothly.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a brighter flavour that balances the sweetness of the beans.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour together before thickening. Cooking flour in butter, a roux, cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour disperse without lumps, so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, tomato, butter, 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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