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Haricot Bean Soup

A bean soup made with soaked beans, bacon or butter, onions, celery, optional tomatoes, milk, salt, pepper, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Put beans in a pot with 2 quarts of water and the fat bacon or butter.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, then add chopped onions, celery, and optional tomatoes.

  2. Add a small pinch of baking soda if the beans are old and hard.

  3. Boil for 2 hours, then strain and mash the mixture, using some milk to help pass it through.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the strained mixture to the pot, add remaining milk, and season with salt and pepper.

  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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup, and their starch thickens it when mashed.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness and helps the mashed mixture pass through the strainer.
Fat bacon or butter
Adds fat for flavour and a rich mouthfeel to the broth.
Baking soda (in the method)
Raises the pot's alkalinity, helping old, hard beans soften more quickly.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours, then strain and mash. Beans must be fully tender before mashing; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly. Straining removes the skins, and adding milk loosens the mixture so it passes through.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, onion, 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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