Skip to main content
Main

Black Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked black beans, water, baking soda, bacon or ham, onion, cloves, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Boil the beans in 3 pints of water with a pinch of baking soda.

  3. When the beans begin to soften, pour off the water.

  4. Cover the beans with the same quantity of water again.

Cook and finish the soup

  1. Add the bacon or ham, sliced onion, and cloves.

  2. Boil until the beans are soft.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Thicken the soup with butter rubbed with flour.

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 + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 once softened and passed through a sieve.
Bacon or ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat to the soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it cooks into the broth.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style paste that thickens the soup as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter rubbed with flour. Flour must be worked evenly into the butter and stirred into the hot soup so it dissolves without lumps. Starch thickens as it heats, so the soup should be kept hot while thickening.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, ham, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, ham, onion, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes