Skip to main content
Main

Dried Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with dried white beans, lean beef, bacon, celery, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dried Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried white beans overnight.

  2. Cut the beef into pieces and place in a soup pot with the bones, broken into pieces.

  3. Add the bacon, cut into small pieces, and season with pepper.

Cook the soup

  1. Pour in 6 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off the scum, then drain the soaked beans and add them to the pot along with the celery.

  3. Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a colander into a tureen.

  2. Serve with small squares of toasted bread.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 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

Dried white beans
Break down during slow boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Lean fresh beef
Becomes tender during slow boiling, adding savory meaty flavor to the broth.
Lean bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavors the broth as it simmers.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavor to the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the meat is tender and the beans are dissolved. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the meat and starches in the beans break down slowly. A hard, rapid boil can toughen meat and leave the beans firm, so the soup stays cloudy and uneven.

“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.

More bean soup recipes

Black 138Haricot 45White 36Baked 31Turtle 22Lima 16 See all 179 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes