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Baked Bean Soup

A soup made from baked beans, tomatoes, onion, celery, and seasonings, thickened with butter, flour, and chili sauce.

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

Baked Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the baked beans through a coarse sieve or vegetable press into boiling water.

  2. Add the strained tomatoes, onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook together for 30 minutes.

  4. Thicken the soup with butter and flour mixed together, then stir in chili sauce.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Provide the main body and thickness of the soup when mashed into the water.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and a rich tomato flavour that balances the sweetness of the beans.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup and gives it a smoother, silkier body.
Chili sauce
Adds a spicy, tangy note that deepens the savoury flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter and flour mixed together. Flour must be cooked in fat and mixed smoothly before it meets the liquid; added raw or in lumps, it will clump and leave a pasty, uneven texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, tomato, pepper, butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, tomato, pepper, butter, flour, sauce. 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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