Skip to main content
Main

Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, beans, and a flour roux, simmered slowly and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the soup bone and beef in a pot with cold water and simmer slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Add the salt and drain the broth through a sieve back into the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix the flour with cold water until smooth, then add to the broth along with pepper.

  2. Add the previously cooked beans.

  3. If the soup is too thick, add hot water until the desired consistency is reached.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + beanstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white beans
Provide the main body and starchy bulk of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it is stirred in, giving the soup body.
Beef
Adds savory meaty flavor to the simmered broth.
Soup bone
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth during slow simmering.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it smooth with cold water first lets it disperse evenly so it thickens the broth without lumps.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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.

More bean soup recipes

Black 138Haricot 45White 36Baked 31Turtle 22Lima 16 See all 179 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes