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Black Bean Soup

A soup made with black beans, tomatoes, corn starch, butter, cloves, and flavored with pepper, salt, brandy, sherry, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the black beans in water until tender.

  2. Add the tomatoes and boil for two hours.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Stir in the corn starch, pepper, salt, butter, and cloves.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add brandy and sherry to taste, along with the lemon slices.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Form the main body of the soup and give it its earthy flavour and thick texture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, breaking down during the long boil to enrich the soup.
Corn starch
Thickens the strained liquid so the soup has a smoother, fuller body.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder mouthfeel and richer flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn starch. Corn starch must be fully dispersed and heated to thicken. Added as lumps or without enough heat, it leaves a grainy texture or fails to thicken the soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, corn, pepper, butter, brandy, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Corianderfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, corn, pepper, butter, brandy, sherry. 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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