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Haricot Soup

A bean soup made with haricot beans, carrot, onion, celery, mace, peppercorns, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans in plenty of cold water overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in 2 quarts of cold water.

Simmer the soup

  1. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil.

  2. Add the onion, mace, celery, peppercorns, and carrot.

  3. Simmer until the beans are tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve using a wooden spoon.

  2. Return the soup to the saucepan, add the milk and salt, and stir in parsley if desired.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  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

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup once puréed.
Milk
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Carrot
Contributes subtle sweetness and body to the soup's base flavour.
Onion
Builds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the simmering liquid.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the simmering broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beans are tender. Dried beans must cook fully to soften their starch and skins; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly through the sieve.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, milk, onion, mace, celery):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Cuminfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, milk, onion, mace, celery. 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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