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Creamed Bean Soup

A bean soup thickened with lard, flour, and sour cream, flavored with carrots, parsley root, onions, paprika, and noodles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Creamed Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Cook the beans in 1 quart of water with the carrots and parsley root until soft.

Make the onion base

  1. Heat the lard in a separate pan.

  2. Add the flour and chopped onions.

  3. Cook until the onions turn red.

  4. Add cold water to the onion mixture.

Combine and finish

  1. Mix it into the beans.

  2. Stir in the paprika and noodles.

  3. Heat a little longer.

  4. Stir in the sour cream.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the main body of the soup and give it its substance.
Lard
Carries flavor and fat for cooking the onions and flour.
Flour
Thickens the onion mixture so the soup becomes creamy.
Sour cream
Adds tang and a smooth, rich texture at the end.
Onions
Provide aroma and sweetness as they cook down in the fat.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour with the onions. The flour must cook in the hot fat long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken smoothly. Adding the cold water afterward helps prevent lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, flour, parsley, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, flour, parsley, cream. 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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