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Haricot Soup

A bean soup with onions, carrot, turnip, water, dripping, salt, pepper, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and drain the beans as per instructions.

  2. Put the beans into a saucepan with the cold water and dripping.

  3. Cut the vegetables into very small pieces.

Cook

  1. When the soup boils, add the vegetables and simmer for 2 to 4 hours until soft.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup through a wire sieve or colander into a bowl.

  2. Rub the vegetables through the sieve with a wooden spoon.

  3. Season to taste.

  4. If using milk, add it with the seasoning.

  5. Pour back into the pan to heat.

  6. Serve with squares of toast.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Beans
Provide the main body and thickening starch that gives the soup its substance.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften during simmering.
Carrot
Adds sweetness, colour and body to the soup as it breaks down.
Turnip
Adds mild flavour and body as it softens during long simmering.
Dripping
Carries flavour and adds richness and fat to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until fully soft. Dried beans need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. If they are undercooked, the starch will not release properly and the vegetables will not pass easily through the sieve, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, turnip, pepper, milk. 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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