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Soup

Cream of Kidney Bean Soup

A creamy soup made with kidney beans, sweet milk, butter, flour, salt, white pepper, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Kidney Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Press the kidney beans through a sieve into a saucepan.

  2. Add the sweet milk to the bean pulp.

  3. Mix the flour, butter, salt, and white pepper, then add to the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Place over medium heat and cook until thickened, about 5 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White pepper + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Pressed through a sieve, they form the body and thick base of the soup.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, softening the bean base into a smooth soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened over medium heat. Flour thickens only as its starch heats in liquid, so stopping too early leaves the soup thin and floury-tasting, while overcooking can make it stick and scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against kidney beans, milk, flour, pepper, 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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