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Haricot Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked haricot beans, onion, cloves, carrot, and seasoned with salt, finished with powdered sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,443 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the haricot beans in cold water overnight with a small piece of baking soda.

  2. The next morning, place the beans in a saucepan with 3 pints of water, the onion with cloves, the carrot, and salt.

  3. Cook until the beans are tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Pound the beans.

  2. Strain through a wire sieve, discarding the onion and carrot.

  3. Add a little powdered sugar and butter just before serving.

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

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

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Break down into a thick, starchy body that gives the soup its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savoury flavour of the soup.
Onion
Infuses the cooking water with savoury aroma before being strained out.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until fully tender. Beans that are not fully softened will not purée smoothly when pounded and strained, leaving a grainy texture in the soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, carrot, butter, sugar):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, carrot, butter, sugar. 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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