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Bean Soup

A simple soup made with French beans, water, celery, onions, potatoes, and caraway or dill seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight in lukewarm water.

  2. The next morning, combine the soaked beans and cold water in a pot.

Cook

  1. Boil for 3-4 hours.

  2. Add celery, onions, and sliced potatoes.

  3. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Season with caraway or dill seed as desired.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carawaytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 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

French beans
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long cooking.
Potatoes
Add starch that softens the broth and gives the soup body.
Celery
Adds savory aroma and a mild vegetal flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil for 3-4 hours. Dried beans must be cooked long enough to soften fully, since their starches and cell walls break down only with sustained heat. Stopping early leaves them firm and grainy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, potato, caraway):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, potato, caraway. 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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