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Haricot Bean Soup

A simple soup of haricot beans, tomatoes, parsley, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in 1 quart of water.

  2. In the morning, add the remaining water and boil until soft.

Finish and serve

  1. Optionally, rub through a sieve.

  2. For tomato flavor, skin and cook tomatoes slowly to pulp before adding.

  3. Add the chopped parsley, lemon juice, and butter.

  4. Boil briefly and serve.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the body of the soup as they soften and break down during boiling.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, savoury tomato flavour once cooked to a pulp.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Cook the tomatoes to a pulp slowly. Slow cooking softens the tomatoes and concentrates their flavour before they are added, so the soup tastes of tomato rather than raw fruit.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, parsley, butter, lemon. 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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