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Haricot Bean Soup

A hearty soup of haricot beans, carrot, onions, mace, cloves, milk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the beans, then soak them overnight in cold water.

  2. Strain the beans and place them in a clean pan with the carrot, onions, mace, cloves, and cold water.

Cook and finish

  1. Bring to a boil slowly, then simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours, adding more cold water as needed.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve, then stir in the milk, salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Reheat the soup 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Soften during long simmering and, once sieved, thicken the soup into a smooth body.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the soup base as it cooks down.
Onions
Build savory aroma and sweetness as they simmer with the beans.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the sieved soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours. A hard boil can break the beans apart and scorch the bottom of the pan. Gentle simmering softens them evenly, and keeping them covered with liquid, topped up with cold water, prevents sticking and concentrates flavor.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, onion, clove, milk, pepper, parsley. 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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