Skip to main content
Main

Puree of Bean Soup with Crusts

A bean soup made from navy beans, stock, onion, mustard, and spices, served hot with crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Puree of Bean Soup with Crusts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make soup stock by boiling meat and marrow bones in 1 gallon of water with assorted vegetables until reduced by half.

  2. Strain and skim off fat.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak navy beans overnight.

  2. Cook with a pinch of baking soda until soft, then mash through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Bring the stock to a boil and gradually mix in the bean puree.

  2. Stir in minced onion.

  3. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.

  4. Season with mustard, salt, and red pepper.

  5. Serve hot, garnished with parsley and accompanied by crusts.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Navy beans
Thicken the soup and give it body and a creamy texture once mashed into a puree.
Soup stock
Forms the savory liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Baking soda (in the method)
Helps the beans soften fully during cooking.
Minced onion
Adds aromatic savoury flavour to the broth.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that brightens the soup.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing the bean puree into the boiling stock. Adding the puree slowly and stirring constantly keeps it evenly dispersed, so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps that stay floury or stick to the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, egg, mustard, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, egg, mustard, pepper, parsley. 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.

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes