Name: Brown Bean Soup
Ingredients: 2 cups brown beans; 1 stalk celery; 1 onion; 2 cups milk or water; ¼ teaspoon allspice; ¼ teaspoon cloves; ⅓ cup sherry; 2 hard-boiled eggs, ground

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brown Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

Boil the brown beans with the celery and onion until tender.
Press the mixture through a colander.
Dilute the bean mixture with milk or water.
Add allspice, cloves, and sherry.

Serve

Serve topped with ground hard-boiled eggs.

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.

Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,159 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Celery + allspicetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,422 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,668 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown beans: Provide the main body and thick texture of the soup once pressed smooth.
Milk or water: Thins the pureed bean mixture to a soup consistency and adds moisture.
Sherry: Adds acidity and a sharp, wine-like aroma that brightens the earthy beans.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and a soft, creamy contrast as a topping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, milk, allspice, clove, sherry, egg):

Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, milk, allspice, clove, sherry, egg. 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.