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Baked Bean Soup

A soup made from leftover beans simmered with tomatoes, onion, celery, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cover leftover beans with water in a pot.

  2. Add tomatoes to taste, sliced onion, sliced celery, mustard, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer for about 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add hot water as needed to achieve the desired consistency.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover beans
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup as they simmer and break down.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens during the long simmer.
Tomato
Contributes acidity and brightness that balances the richness of the beans.
Celery
Adds subtle vegetal aroma and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Straining the mixture. Straining removes softened skins and fibres so the soup becomes smooth. Adding hot water afterward lets you adjust thickness without diluting flavour too much, since the mixture is already concentrated after simmering.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, celery, mustard, pepper):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, celery, mustard, pepper. 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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