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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with white beans, salt pork, and seasonings, simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Place the white beans in a kettle and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil.

  2. Add the baking soda and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans through a colander and rinse with cold water.

Cook the soup

  1. Return the beans to the kettle, add 1 gallon of boiling water, and cook for 1 hour.

  2. In another kettle, boil the salt pork for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the pork, scrape it well, and add it to the beans.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and cook until the meat is tender.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  2. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

White beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they soften during long cooking.
Baking soda
Raises the pot's alkalinity, helping the beans soften faster.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda and boil for 20 minutes. Baking soda is a small amount, and too much can make beans mushy and give them a soapy taste. Boiling it with the beans helps soften their skins so they cook evenly.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper. 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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