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Haricot Soup

A bean soup made with haricot beans, onion, water, milk, pepper, and sea salt.

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

  1. Soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Wash the beans.

  3. Place them in a pot with the water and sliced onion.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil for four hours.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Return the mixture to the pot.

Finish

  1. Add boiling milk. Serve.

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. 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. Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 long-cooked and pressed through a sieve, thickening the soup into a body.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it simmers with the beans.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the thinned purée.

The step that matters

Boil until the beans are fully soft. Beans must be completely tender before sieving. Under-cooked beans stay grainy and their skins resist pressing, so the soup will not turn smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, milk, 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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