Skip to main content
Main

Soue Pickled Beans As a Vegetable

A savory soup made from pickled beans, onion, and lard, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Soue Pickled Beans As a Vegetable

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the lard in a large pan until very hot.

  2. Add the chopped onion and flour; stir and let brown.

  3. Pour in enough water to create a thick gravy.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the pickled beans from their juice, cut them, and add to the gravy.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. If needed, add a little pickle vinegar for extra sourness.

  4. Boil for fifteen minutes.

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 + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Lard
Fat that carries heat for browning the onion and flour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as it cooks with the water.
Pickled beans
Provide the main sour flavour and the body of the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the fat.

The step that matters

Let the onion and flour brown. Browning the flour in hot fat develops nutty, toasted flavour and colour before liquid is added. If the mixture is not hot enough or is stirred too little, the flour can scorch or stay pale and taste raw.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes