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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with beans, salt pork, water, and optional celery and corn, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,211 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in soft, lukewarm water.

  2. The next morning, boil the beans in 2-3 quarts of cold water for 30 minutes.

Prepare the pork

  1. Boil the salt pork in fresh water for 30 minutes, then cut it into thick, square strips.

Cook the soup

  1. Drain the water from the beans and add 1 gallon of fresh water.

  2. Add the pork strips to the beans and boil everything together for about 3 hours.

  3. Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and add celery if desired.

  4. Strain the soup before serving.

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 + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Celery + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

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

  5. Pork + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long boiling.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory, smoky flavor that carries through the broth.

The step that matters

Boiling the beans and pork together for about 3 hours. A long, steady boil is what softens the beans fully and lets the pork flavor spread into the broth. Too short a cook leaves the beans firm and the soup thin and bland.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, pepper, corn):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, pepper, corn. 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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