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Haricot Soup

A bean soup made with haricots, onions, carrot, turnip, water, dripping, and optional milk, simmered until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and drain the beans as per instructions.

  2. Dice the onions, carrot, and turnip into very small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the beans, cold water, and dripping.

  2. Add the diced vegetables to the saucepan.

  3. Simmer for 2 to 4 hours until the vegetables are soft.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a wire sieve or colander into a bowl.

  2. Rub the vegetables through the sieve with a wooden spoon.

  3. Season the soup to taste.

  4. If using milk, add it with the seasoning.

  5. Return the soup to the pan to heat.

  6. Serve with squares of toast.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provide the main body and thickening starch that gives the soup its substance.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color, and softens to help thicken when rubbed through.
Turnip
Contributes earthy flavor and softened pulp that thickens the soup when sieved.
Dripping
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor through the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until fully soft. Beans and vegetables must be fully tender before sieving; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly, leaving a thin, gritty texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

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