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White Bean Soup

A soup made from white beans, butter, flour, salt, vegetable stock, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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White Bean Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beans and soak them in rainwater.

  2. Cook the beans in a pot over moderate heat until tender.

  3. Pass the cooked beans through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, brown the flour in the butter.

  2. Add the sieved beans, salt, and vegetable stock to the pan.

  3. If the soup is too thick, add a little warm water.

  4. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add the toasted 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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

White beans
Provide the main body, and their starch gives the soup a creamy, thick texture.
Flour
Cooked in butter, it forms a roux that thickens the soup and adds a toasty flavor.
Butter
Carries the flour's cooking and adds richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Vegetable stock
Forms the cooking liquid and adds savory depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cooking flour in fat drives off its raw starch taste and lets it thicken the soup evenly. Flour scorches quickly, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly, stopping once it turns pale golden and smells nutty.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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.

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