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Boy Bean Soup I

A soup made from soy beans, celery, onion, butter, flour, mustard, salt, pepper, lemon, and hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Boy Bean Soup I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the soy beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and add celery and cold water.

  3. Cook for four hours or until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onion thinly and brown it slightly in the butter.

  2. Add flour, mustard, salt, pepper, and the cooked beans with water.

  3. Reheat to boiling, then strain the mixture.

  4. Pour the strained soup over sliced hard-boiled eggs and lemon.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Soy beans
Provide the main body and protein-rich base that gives the soup its substance.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while browning the onion for flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smoother body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add texture and substance as the garnish laid over the soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Reheat to boiling, then strain the mixture. Flour needs to come to a boil to fully cook and thicken the liquid, and straining removes the beans' solids so the soup stays smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, mustard, butter, celery, flour, lemon, pepper):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, mustard, butter, celery, flour, lemon, 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.

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