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Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked beans, onion, beef fat, and optional pork or ham bone, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional red pepper or vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Put the beans in fresh water with the onion and beef fat.

  4. Simmer until very soft.

Make the soup

  1. Mash or press the beans through a colander to remove the skins.

  2. Add enough water to make two quarts of somewhat thick soup.

  3. Season the soup to taste.

  4. Add pork or ham bone, red pepper, or chopped vegetables an hour before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup, thickening it as they break down when mashed.
Beef fat
Adds richness and carries flavour through the soup.
Onion
Contributes aroma and savoury sweetness as it cooks into the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until very soft. Beans must be fully tender before mashing, since undercooked beans stay firm and grainy and will not press smoothly through a colander to give a thick soup.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, beef, pepper, pork, turnip):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, beef, pepper, pork, turnip. 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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