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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked beans, onions, potato, bacon, and optional tomato juice, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans and bacon

  1. Wash the beans and soak them in 1 quart of warm soft water overnight.

  2. Add 5 pints of cold or boiling water to the beans and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the chopped onions, potato, and parsley or other flavoring.

  4. Wash the bacon several times with hot and cold water.

  5. Boil the bacon in enough water to cover it for 5 to 10 minutes.

  6. Pour off the water.

  7. Add the bacon to the bean soup.

  8. Let the soup boil for about an hour until the meat is tender.

  9. Remove the bacon and set it aside to cool.

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer the soup slowly for 3 hours or longer.

  2. Strain the soup.

  3. Let the soup stand for a while.

  4. Remove the fat.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the fat with 2 to 3 tablespoons of flour in a clean saucepan over heat.

  2. Gradually add the strained bean soup.

  3. Bring to a boil for a few minutes.

  4. Serve.

  5. If a thinner soup is desired, use less fat and flour.

  6. Optionally add strained tomato juice and chopped parsley before serving.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provide the main body and substance of the soup as they soften during long cooking.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory flavor and fat to the soup as it simmers.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook into the broth.
Potato
Breaks down during cooking and helps thicken the soup slightly.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with the fat before the broth is added.

The step that matters

Mixing the fat with flour before adding the soup. Flour must be cooked in the fat for a few minutes before liquid is added, so starch granules swell smoothly. Adding it raw or to cold liquid causes lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, potato, flour, tomato, bread, carrot):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, potato, flour, tomato, bread, carrot. 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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