Name: Black Bean Soup
Ingredients: 1½ pints black beans (if not soaked overnight) or 1 pint (if soaked); 1 teaspoon summer savory; 1 onion (optional); small piece of pork; beef bone, turkey bones, or chicken bones; 1 lemon, sliced; 4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced; ½ cup white wine; ½ cup tomato ketchup

Why it works: Beans and summer savory share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 39 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

1½ pints black beans (if not soaked overnight) or 1 pint (if soaked)
1 teaspoon summer savory
1 onion (optional)
small piece of pork
beef bone, turkey bones, or chicken bones
1 lemon, sliced
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
½ cup white wine
½ cup tomato ketchup

Directions

Cook the beans

If beans are not soaked overnight, rinse and cook 1½ pints in water until tender; if soaked, use 1 pint.
Add summer savory, onion, pork, and bones to the beans and simmer.

Serve

In a soup dish, layer sliced lemon and hard-boiled eggs.
Pour in the white wine and tomato ketchup 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.

Beans + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together39 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Summer savory + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together115 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans: Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they cook until tender.
Pork: Adds savory, meaty flavor to the broth while it simmers.
Bones: Release flavor and gelatin into the broth during simmering.
White wine: Adds acidity and a bright, aromatic note to the finished soup.
Tomato ketchup: Adds sweetness, tang, and body to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, summer savory, pork, beef, lemon, egg, white wine):

Asparagusfits better
Shallotfits better
Tomatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, summer savory, pork, beef, lemon, egg, white wine. 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.