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Of Kidney Beans

A hearty bean soup made with kidney beans, bacon, herbs, onions, carrot, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Of Kidney Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the kidney beans in lukewarm water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the soaked beans.

  3. Place the beans in a kettle with the salted bacon.

  4. Cover the kettle with cold water.

Cook and strain

  1. Add the bay leaf, thyme, parsley, onions, and carrot.

  2. Cook until everything is well done.

  3. Remove the thyme, bay leaf, onions, and cloves.

  4. Mash the mixture.

  5. Strain the mashed mixture.

  6. Discard the bacon.

  7. Return the strained mixture to the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Add the broth, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer on moderate heat until well done.

  3. Serve with or without the bacon.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it when mashed and strained.
Salted bacon
Adds salty, savory fat and flavor to the cooking liquid.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.
Broth
Adds extra liquid and savory flavor to the strained soup.

The step that matters

Mashing and straining the mixture. Mashing and straining turn the cooked beans into a smooth, thick soup. If the mixture is not cooked until very soft, the beans will not break down properly and the soup will be grainy.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, parsley, onion, clove, carrot, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, parsley, onion, clove, carrot, 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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