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Haricot Soup

A bean soup made with haricot beans, pickled pork or bacon, onions, and broth or water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion 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 ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pour boiling water over the haricot beans and let them stand covered for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the skins from the beans as you would blanch almonds.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil the skinned beans in 1 quart of water with the pickled pork and onions.

  2. Cook the beans until tender, about 3 hours, adding water as needed to prevent sticking.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add enough broth or water to achieve desired thickness.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add finely minced meat.

  4. Let the mixture boil together before serving.

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

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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

Haricot beans
Break down when cooked and sieved, giving the soup its body and thick texture.
Pickled pork or fat bacon
Fat and savory flavor carried into the water as it simmers with the beans.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavor into the cooking liquid during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until tender. Dried haricot beans need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly when rubbed through a sieve. Adding water as needed keeps them from scorching on the pot base.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Sesamefits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Soybeanfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, 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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