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Of Dry Beans

A bean soup cooked with ham bones or salt pork, onions, carrot, thyme, parsley, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Of Dry Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in cold or lukewarm water for 6 to 24 hours, then drain.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the soaked beans, ham bones or salt pork, and cover with cold water.

  3. Add the bay leaf, thyme, parsley, onions, and carrot.

Cook and mash

  1. Cook until everything is well cooked, then remove the thyme, bay leaf, onions, and cloves.

  2. Mash the mixture through a colander, adding some of the cooking water to help.

Finish

  1. Return the mashed beans to the saucepan, add broth or water to desired consistency, salt, and butter.

  2. Stir occasionally until the butter is melted and fully mixed in.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dry beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Ham bones or salt pork
Add savory, smoky flavour and richness to the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the mashed soup.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Mash the mixture through a colander, adding some of the cooking water to help.. Beans must be fully cooked and soft before mashing; undercooked beans stay grainy and resist passing through the colander. Adding cooking water loosens the purée so it stays smooth rather than pasty.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, thyme, parsley, onion, clove, carrot, butter):

  1. Lentilsfits about as well
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, thyme, parsley, onion, clove, carrot, butter. 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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