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Haricot Bean Soup

A thick soup of haricot beans simmered with onion, dripping, water, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight in cold water with the pinch of bicarbonate of soda.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a saucepan, then add the minced onion and drained beans.

  2. Cook for five minutes with the lid on the saucepan.

  3. Add 1½ pints of water and simmer for three to four hours, or until the beans are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve, add the milk, and reheat gently, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Serve with croutons of fried bread.

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

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

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the bulk of the soup and, once softened and sieved, its thick body.
Bicarbonate of soda
Softens the bean skins during soaking so the beans cook tender.
Dripping
Carries the flavour of the onion and adds richness through fat.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the soup's flavour when stirred in.

The step that matters

Simmering until the beans are tender. Haricot beans must be fully softened before sieving, because undercooked skins and starch stay grainy and the soup will not thicken smoothly. Soaking helps, but the long simmer does the real work.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, milk, pepper, bread. 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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