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Haricot Soup

A bean soup with cabbage, bacon, chili, onion, butter, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

  1. Boil the haricot beans in water until tender.

  2. Add the cabbage, bacon, red chili, and salt; boil steadily for 1 hour.

Add the onion

  1. In a separate pan, fry the sliced onion in butter until golden.

  2. Add the fried onion and a little garlic to the soup, stirring frequently while cooking.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together635 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Cook until tender to give the soup its body and creamy texture.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a soft, tender texture as it simmers.
Bacon
Contributes fat and savory, smoky flavor to the broth.
Onion
Frying until golden builds sweetness and savory aroma in the soup.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness through fat.

The step that matters

Frying the onion until golden. Onion sugars browning through the Maillard reaction give deep, sweet flavor. If the butter gets too hot or the onion goes past golden, it turns bitter and can carry that bitterness into the whole soup.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, butter, garlic. 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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