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Baked-bean Soup

A soup made from baked beans, tomato, onion, water, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked-bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the baked beans, tomato, onion, and water for one hour.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve, then strain it.

  3. Add the butter and flour.

  4. Cook for ten minutes.

  5. Season to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with crisp crackers or croutons.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Break down into the soup's body and add starch that helps thicken it.
Tomato
Adds acidity, colour and a bright flavour that balances the beans.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and background flavour as it cooks down.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, smooth mouthfeel and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, especially when cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter. Flour clumps if dropped into hot liquid unmixed. Blend it smoothly with the butter first, then cook for the full ten minutes so the starch thickens fully and the raw flour taste cooks off.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, butter, flour):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, butter, flour. 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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