Recipe
🍽️ DINNER
Soupe au Pistou
A summer vegetable and white bean soup finished off the heat with pistou, a raw pounded paste of basil, garlic and cheese.
Monegasque · easy · serves 6
prep 25 min · cook 50 min
~353 cal · 20g protein · 52g carbs · 7g fat · 10g fiber · 5g sugars · 4g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Soupe au pistou is the great summer soup of the Riviera and a fixture of the Monegasque table, a gentle broth of white beans, green beans, courgette, potato and tomato with a little pasta. What makes it sing is the pistou stirred in at the very end, a raw paste of basil, garlic, olive oil and cheese pounded in a mortar.
Unlike Genoese pesto it carries no pine nuts, just the bright green punch of basil and garlic. The pistou is never cooked, only added off the heat, so its fresh perfume rises over the mellow vegetables.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
1 1/2 cups cooked white beans
150 g green beans, chopped
2 courgette, diced
2 potatoes, diced
2 carrots, diced
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, chopped
75 g small pasta
1 basil, a large bunch
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup parmesan, grated
1/4 cup olive oil
Instructions
1
Soften the onion in a little oil in a large pot, then add the carrots, potatoes, courgette, green beans and tomatoes.
2
Cover with water, season, add the white beans, and simmer about 40 minutes until all the vegetables are tender.
3
Add the pasta and cook until just tender, then take the pot off the heat.
4
Pound the basil, garlic, parmesan (or nutritional yeast) and olive oil into a rough paste, then stir it into the soup off the heat and serve at once.
✎ Chef’s note
Never boil the pistou, stir it in off the heat so the basil keeps its bright, fresh flavour.
Monegasque and Nicoise home cooking.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Monaco. The cooking is Ligurian rather than French. Socca, a thin chickpea flour pancake baked in a wide pan and scraped up hot, is a street food shared with Nice; olive oil, basil and stockfish run through the older recipes; and the fish is Mediterranean, small, and cooked without much done to it.
🗺️
Monaco. Socca is shared rather than local: a chickpea-flour pancake baked in a wide pan, the same thing Nice sells and Liguria calls farinata, eaten hot with black pepper and no cutlery. Monaco is not France, and its cooking sits on the Nicoise and Ligurian side of that line rather than the French one.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Monaco
StocafiMonaco's stockfish stew, simmered in tomato, wine, olives, and herbs until rich and tender.
SoccaA thin, crisp-edged chickpea-flour pancake baked hot and eaten in torn pieces with black pepper.
Pan BagnatA round loaf soaked in olive oil and packed with a Niçoise salad of tuna, egg, and vegetables, a Riviera lunch.
Browse all Monaco recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Pot or saucepan.
Storing it: Soup keeps 3 to 4 days refrigerated and freezes well. Reheat gently and loosen with a little water or stock if needed.
Make it a Monaco meal
Fougasse MonégasqueDessert
Pan BagnatLunch
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Cuisine
Diet
Frequently asked questions
What is Soupe au Pistou?
A summer vegetable and white bean soup finished off the heat with pistou, a raw pounded paste of basil, garlic and cheese.
Where does Soupe au Pistou come from?
Soupe au Pistou is a Monegasque dish from Monaco, Monaco.
Can Soupe au Pistou be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Soupe au Pistou recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Soupe au Pistou safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Soupe au Pistou take to make?
About 75 minutes total (25 minutes prep, 50 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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