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Haricot Bean Soup

A bean soup made with haricots de Soissons, celery, onion, cloves, bay leaf, parsley, pepper, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and cook

  1. Soak the haricots in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Discard the soaking water and place the beans in a saucepan with 3 pints of cold water.

  3. Add celery, onion, cloves, bay leaf, parsley, whole pepper, and salt.

  4. Boil until the beans are tender, then strain the water.

Finish the soup

  1. Pass the beans through a sieve to make a puree.

  2. Return the puree to the saucepan and stir in the butter, adding some of the cooking liquid if needed.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Haricots de soissons
Dried white beans that break down into a thick, smooth puree that body the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the puree a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Celery
Adds a savory, aromatic background flavour as it simmers with the beans.

The step that matters

Adding the cooking liquid to the puree. The puree can be too thick to pour or too stiff to taste well. Adding back some cooking liquid loosens it to the right consistency, and stirring in butter off the heat helps the fat emulsify smoothly rather than separate.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, clove, parsley, pepper, butter. 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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