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Bean Soup

A simple kidney bean soup with butter, salt, red pepper, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Put the kidney beans in 2 quarts of water and boil for 3 hours.

  2. Pour off the water and mash the beans through a colander using a wooden masher.

  3. Return the mashed beans to the boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter, salt, and red pepper, and let it boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir in the white wine 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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Kidney beans + white winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it when mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the broth, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
White wine
Adds acidity and a bright aroma that balances the starchy beans.

The step that matters

Mashing the beans after the long boil. Beans cooked this long are soft enough to break down easily. Mashing them through a colander releases starch that thickens the soup, so they should be pressed while still hot.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, pepper, white wine):

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, white wine. 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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