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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beans, bacon, potato, onion, lard, and flour, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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 the beans

  1. Put the beans in 2 quarts of cold water and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the beans through a colander and return the beans to the stove.

Make the soup

  1. Add 1.5 quarts of boiling water, bacon, potato, onion, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil until the beans are soft.

  3. Brown the lard and flour together.

  4. Add the browned mixture to the soup.

  5. Add more water if the soup is too thick.

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

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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

Beans
Provide the main body of the soup and thicken it as they soften and break down.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat flavor to the broth.
Potato
Adds starch that gives the soup more body as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the soup when browned in lard and stirred in.
Lard
Carries the flour's flavor and browns it, adding richness.

The step that matters

Brown the lard and flour together. Cooking flour in fat until it browns removes raw starch taste and gives a nutty flavor and thickening power. Stirring constantly prevents scorching, which would make the soup bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, potato, pepper, flour):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, potato, pepper, flour. 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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