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Bean Soup

A hearty soup of soaked beans, salt pork, onion, butter, and flour, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans.

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

  3. Drain the beans.

  4. Rinse the beans in 2 waters to remove any rank flavor.

Cook the soup

  1. Combine the pork and beans with 4 quarts of cold water in a pot.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil.

  3. Boil for 6 hours.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Return the strained soup to the pot and bring to a boil.

Thicken and serve

  1. Melt the butter or drippings in a separate saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook until light brown.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the soup.

  4. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  5. Serve with toasted bread and the pork.

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

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

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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 main body of the soup as they soften during the long simmer.
Salt pork
Adds savory flavor and fat to the broth as it cooks with the beans.
Butter or drippings
Carries the flour and adds rich, savory flavor to the thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in fat and stirred into the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in fat until light brown. Flour must be cooked in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste and to form a smooth roux. Stirring it into the hot soup gradually helps prevent lumps and keeps the thickening even.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, pepper, butter, 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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