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Soup

Recipe for Black Bean Soup

A soup of black beans simmered with chicken or beef and bacon, finished with ketchup, sherry, eggs and meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Recipe for Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Drain the black beans.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the beans, onion, water, chicken (or beef and bacon).

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Simmer until the beans are tender and the meat is cooked.

  4. Remove the meat.

  5. Chop the meat.

  6. Season the meat with pepper and salt.

  7. Form the seasoned meat into balls.

  8. Roll the meatballs in egg white.

  9. Dry the meatballs on the stove.

  10. Strain the soup.

  11. Add ketchup, sherry, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and the meatballs 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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 soften during simmering.
Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs add chopped richness and substance; egg white helps the meatballs hold together.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Chicken
Simmered in the pot to flavour the broth and cooks to provide the meat for the meatballs.

The step that matters

Dry the meatballs on the stove. Drying helps the egg-white coating set and firm up so the meatballs hold their shape instead of breaking apart when added to the hot soup.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, chicken, pepper, sherry, egg):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, chicken, pepper, sherry, egg. 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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