Skip to main content
Main

Haricot Bean Soup

A soup of small white haricots simmered with celery, leek, onion, peppercorns, water, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in cold water overnight.

Make the soup

  1. Put the beans into a saucepan with the water, peppercorns, and sliced vegetables.

  2. Simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt and boiling milk.

  2. Serve with 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. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Leek + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  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

Small white haricots
Provide the main body and thickening starch that makes the soup creamy after sieving.
Milk
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the finished soup.
Leek
Contributes a mild onion-like aroma and savoury flavour as it softens during simmering.
Onion
Builds savoury depth and aroma as it cooks down into the broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background flavour to the simmered broth.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a wire sieve. Beans and softened vegetables must be pushed through fully so the soup becomes smooth and thickened; skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy, thin texture with skins and fibres still present.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, onion, 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesLeek SoupLeek Soup31 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes