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Italian Soup

A hearty soup made with lima beans, tomatoes, rice, onions, butter, and optional corn and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and corn work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Italian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 3 pints of boiling water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add the remains of a cold fowl, cold roast beef, or ham bone.

  3. Stir in the lima beans, tomatoes, rice, and fried onions.

  4. Add the butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Let the soup boil for about 20 minutes.

  6. Add the corn from the 3 cobs and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  7. If desired, add sliced Irish potatoes.

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. Lima beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Rice + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lima beans
Add body and a starchy, earthy substance that thickens the broth as they cook.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and moisture, giving the broth its tangy, rounded flavour.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and swells, thickening the soup and adding soft texture.
Onions
Browning them first adds sweetness and deep savoury flavour to the broth.
Corn
Adds natural sweetness and a bright, tender bite near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the corn after the 20-minute boil. Corn cooks quickly and turns starchy and dull if overcooked, so it is added late for a sweet, tender result.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, rice, onion, butter, pepper, corn):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, rice, onion, butter, pepper, corn. 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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