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Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with stock, haricot beans, onion, cloves, bay leaves, dried mint, and a roux of dripping and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, heat the dripping over medium heat until it releases a blue vapor.

  2. Add the flour and stir well, but do not brown.

  3. Pour in the stock, then add the beans, mint, bay leaves, chopped onion, cloves, and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Simmer for one hour.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a wire sieve into a bowl, using a wooden spoon to push the beans through.

  2. Remove the bay leaves and cloves, then re-boil the soup 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Mint + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dripping
Fat that carries flavour and forms the base for the flour.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked into the hot fat, giving the soup body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Haricot beans
Add body and starch; pushing them through a sieve thickens the soup further.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Stir the flour without browning it. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot fat just enough to lose its raw taste. Browning darkens the colour and weakens its thickening power, so the soup may turn out thinner and less smooth.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, clove, flour, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, clove, flour, 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.

More bean soup recipes

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