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Brown Bean and Tomato Soup

A tomato and brown bean soup flavored with ham or bacon, flour, ketchup, and Tabasco.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bean and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bean and tomato base

  1. Boil the tomatoes with the onion and cooked brown beans in a pot.

  2. Pour in hot water until the mixture is covered.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes, then strain through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. In a saucepan, fry the ham or bacon strips until crispy.

  2. Add the flour to the pan and cook briefly.

  3. Stir in the strained mixture of beans and tomatoes.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, tomato ketchup, and a dash of Tabasco.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Brown beans
Provide the body and starchy thickness that makes the soup substantial.
Tomatoes
Supply acidity, liquid and the base flavour of the soup.
Ham or bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat flavour when fried until crispy.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks briefly with the fat from the pan.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness that deepens during boiling.

The step that matters

Cook the flour briefly in the pan before adding the bean mixture. Flour cooked in fat loses its raw taste and thickens smoothly. Adding it straight to liquid or skipping the short cook can leave lumps and a pasty flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, beans, ham, flour, pepper, ketchup, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, beans, ham, flour, pepper, ketchup, sauce. 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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