Skip to main content
Main

Haricot Bean Soup

A simple bean soup made with haricot beans, stock, pepper, salt, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Drain the beans and boil them in cold water, slightly salted, until tender, about 1.5 hours.

Make the soup

  1. Press the beans through a sieve, discarding the husks, and add to warm stock.

  2. Season with pepper and salt to taste, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with small squares of fried bread.

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

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

  2. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the body of the soup; when pressed through a sieve they thicken it into a smooth purée.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour for the soup.

The step that matters

Pressing the beans through a sieve. Pressing cooked beans breaks their cell walls and releases starch, which thickens the stock. Removing the husks keeps the texture smooth rather than gritty.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, bread):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes