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Cream of Beans Soup

A creamy soup made from haricot beans, milk, egg, olive oil, salt, cayenne pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,470 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream of Beans Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the haricot beans until soft and mushy.

  2. Mash the beans through a sieve into a pot.

Make the soup

  1. Add the milk, beaten egg, olive oil, salt, and cayenne pepper to the pot.

  2. Return the mixture to the heat and bring to a boil.

Thicken and finish

  1. For a thicker soup, retain 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

  2. Brown the retained olive oil in a saucepan, then mix in the flour.

  3. Smooth the flour mixture with part of the soup, then pour it back into the pot.

  4. Allow the soup to boil together.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and starch that give the soup its creamy, thick base.
Milk
Adds liquid, richness and a smooth dairy texture to the soup.
Large egg
Adds protein that helps enrich and thicken the soup when heated.
Olive oil
Adds fat and flavour; browning it first gives a nutty, toasted taste to the thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in fat and combined with the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the flour mixture with the soup. Flour must be smoothed into the liquid and then boiled so its starch swells and thickens the soup; lumps form if it is added dry or not fully cooked.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, olive, pepper, flour):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, olive, pepper, flour. 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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