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Haricot Bean Soup

A bean soup made with haricot beans, butter, onion, celery seeds, water, and milk, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in water for 24 hours if possible.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the soaked beans, butter, onion, celery seeds, and water.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil gently for 3 hours or until the beans are soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the saucepan.

  3. Add the milk, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Stir until the soup boils and serve with small pieces of fried bread.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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
Provide the main body and thickness once softened and sieved into the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour when stirred in at the end.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour from the onion and celery seeds.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and sweetness as it cooks gently in the soup.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 hours. Beans must become fully soft before sieving; a hard boil can break the skins unevenly and stick to the pan, while undercooked beans leave a grainy, starchy texture that the sieve cannot fix.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, celery, 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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