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Baked Bean Soup

A soup made from cold beans, onion, cloves, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with eggs, lemon, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine cold beans, onion, and whole cloves in a stew-pan.

  2. Cover with cold water and boil until soft.

  3. Press the mixture through a strainer and return to the stove.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Add sliced hard-boiled eggs and thinly sliced lemon when ready to serve.

  2. Omit lemon and eggs for a thinner soup.

  3. Use hot milk instead.

  4. Serve with toast cut into small squares.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beans
Form the main body of the soup once boiled and pressed through a strainer.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add substance and a soft, rich texture as a garnish-style addition.
Lemon
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the mild, starchy bean flavor.
Hot milk
Adds richness and a smoother, thinner texture in place of the lemon and eggs.

The step that matters

Press the mixture through a strainer. Pressing the cooked beans and onion through a strainer breaks them down into a smooth, even body; leftover lumps or skins will make the soup grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, clove, pepper, egg, lemon, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, clove, pepper, egg, lemon, milk. 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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