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Ideal Bean Soup

A hearty bean soup simmered with optional salt pork, chicken, bay leaves, red pepper, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Ideal Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in 3 quarts of cold water.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a soup pot with 2 quarts of fresh water.

Simmer

  1. Add the diced salt pork, chicken parts, bay leaves, and red pepper bag.

  2. Simmer for 4 to 5 hours, adding water as needed until the beans are soft.

  3. If desired, boil a small onion with the beans.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour and butter together.

  2. Add a little soup to smooth the mixture before incorporating it into the pot to prevent separation.

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. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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 beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as their starches soften during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the soup broth when cooked with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour into a smooth thickening paste.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Incorporating the flour and butter mixture. Adding flour and butter directly to hot liquid can form lumps. Blending it with a little soup first smooths it, so it disperses evenly and thickens the broth without separating.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, sugar, butter, flour, pepper, pork, chicken):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, sugar, butter, flour, pepper, pork, chicken. 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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