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Haricot Bean Soup

A thick soup made from soaked beans, bacon or butter, onions, turnip, celery, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beans and soak them in cold water for 24 hours.

  2. Put the soaked beans in a pot with 8 cups of water and the bacon or butter.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add the cleaned and roughly chopped vegetables.

  4. Optionally, add a small pinch of baking soda if the beans are old and hard.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil for 2.5 hours, then strain the mixture, mashing it well.

  2. Use some of the milk to wash the mixture through the strainer, discarding the skins.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the remaining milk, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Warm the soup in the pot 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Beans
Provide the main body and starch that thickens the soup when mashed through the strainer.
Bacon or butter
Adds fat and savory flavor to the cooking liquid.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften during the long simmer.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, mellow body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil for 2.5 hours, then strain and mash. The beans must cook until fully soft so they break down easily when mashed through the strainer. Undercooked beans stay grainy and leave the soup thin and gritty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, turnip, celery, milk, 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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