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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beans, salt pork, vegetables, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight in lukewarm water.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and place them in a kettle with 1 gallon of cold water and 1 pound of salt pork.

  3. Add 2-3 onions, 1 carrot, a little red pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil slowly for 3 hours, keeping the pot covered.

  2. Finely chop the head of celery and add it to the pot.

  3. Strain the soup through a colander or sieve and return it to the fire.

  4. Serve hot with slices of 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 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 + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 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

Beans
Provide the body and starch that thicken the soup as they cook down.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory depth that carries the flavor of the broth.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavor as they soften in the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, vegetal flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly, keeping the pot covered. A slow simmer lets the beans soften fully without breaking apart or scorching on the bottom. Keeping the lid on holds in moisture and heat so the beans cook evenly over the three hours.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, onion, carrot, pepper, celery):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, onion, carrot, pepper, celery. 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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