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Haricot Soup

A bean soup made with haricots, onions, turnips, carrots, celery seed, water, butter, salt, pepper, and soaked sago or tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the haricots overnight.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the haricots with onions, turnips, carrots, celery seed, and water for several hours.

  2. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Thicken the soup with soaked sago or tapioca.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricots
Dried beans that break down during long boiling, giving the soup its body and thickness.
Sago or tapioca
Starch that thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smoother, heavier texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the finished soup.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aroma as they simmer with the beans.

The step that matters

Boil the haricots for several hours. Dried beans need prolonged boiling to soften fully; if they stay firm, the sieved soup will be grainy and uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, butter, 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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