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Haricot Soup

A bean soup made with haricot beans, carrots, turnip, onions, and stock, seasoned to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the beans in water overnight.

  2. Chop the carrot, turnip, and onions.

Make the soup

  1. Add the chopped vegetables to the stock.

  2. Boil for three hours.

  3. Strain through a wire sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Season to taste and heat up.

  2. Serve with 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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and thickness of the soup as they soften and break down.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks down.
Turnip
Adds a mild, earthy flavour and body to the broth.
Onions
Build the aromatic base of the soup as they soften and release their sweetness.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Boil for three hours. A long, steady boil is needed to fully soften the dried beans and let them break down, which thickens the soup. Stopping early can leave beans firm and the soup thin.

Swap the onion

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

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

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