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Haricot Bean Soup

A bean soup made with soaked beans, bacon or butter, onions, turnip, celery, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beans and soak them in cold water for 24 hours.

  2. Put the soaked beans in a pot with 2 quarts of water and the fat bacon or butter.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Add the cleaned and roughly chopped onions, turnip, and celery.

  5. Add a small pinch of baking soda if the beans are old and hard.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil for 2.5 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Mash the mixture, using some milk to help it pass through.

  4. Add the remaining milk, salt, and pepper to taste.

  5. Warm everything in the pot 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 thicken it as they break down during long boiling.
Fat bacon or butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and smoothness to the mashed soup.
Baking soda (in the method)
Helps soften old, hard beans so they cook more evenly.

The step that matters

Boiling for 2.5 hours. The beans must cook long enough to become fully tender, since undercooked dried beans stay firm and can cause a gritty texture when mashed. Keep the pot at a steady simmer and check tenderness before straining.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, turnip, celery, milk, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, turnip, celery, milk, 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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