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Delicious Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked white beans, cream, butter, salt, pepper, and toasted bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delicious Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the white beans overnight.

  2. Boil the beans until perfectly soft.

  3. Drain the beans, leaving enough water to create a thick gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the beans to the stove and add the cream, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Serve the soup sprinkled with toasted bread crumbs.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Break down when boiled soft, giving the soup its body and thick texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until perfectly soft. Beans must be fully softened, since starch breaks down during long cooking. Under-cooked beans stay firm and grainy, and they will not blend into a smooth, thick gravy.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, pepper, bread):

  1. Lima beansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, pepper, bread. 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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