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Cream of Bean Soup

A creamy soup made from soaked beans, water, milk, butter, and seasonings, thickened optionally with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

Cook and mash

  1. Boil the beans in slightly salted water until very soft, leaving about 3 cups of liquid.

  2. Remove from heat, strain through a colander, and mash to a paste.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the mashed beans to the pot, add milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. If the soup is not thick enough, mix flour with a little cold water and add it to the soup.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup once cooked and mashed into a paste.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a softer, rounder flavour to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup if it is not thick enough after mashing.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed with cold water first so it disperses without lumps. Added dry or to hot liquid, it clumps, and the starch only thickens fully once the soup is heated enough to gelatinise it.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, pepper, flour. 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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