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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with white beans, potatoes, pork, onions, peppers, cabbage, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the white beans overnight.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the soaked beans, water, fried onion, partly boiled potatoes, pork, red pepper, cabbage, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and let simmer slowly for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Pass the mixture through a colander and return the pulp to the pot.

Serve

  1. Fry the croutons in butter until browned on all sides.

  2. Pour the soup into a tureen, add the croutons, and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Provide the bulk and body of the soup as they soften and break down during simmering.
Potatoes
Partly cooked, they thicken the soup and add a creamy texture when passed through a colander.
Pork
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the broth during the long simmer.
Onion
Fried or sautéed first, it adds sweetness and aroma as its sugars brown in butter.
Butter
Browns the croutons, adding richness and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Simmering the soup slowly. A gentle simmer over 4 to 5 hours lets the beans and potatoes fully soften and release their starch, so the pulp thickens the soup. A hard boil can break the mixture unevenly and leave the beans tough.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, potato, pork, pepper, bread, butter):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, potato, pork, pepper, bread, butter. 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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