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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, water, bay leaves, salt, pepper, optional thyme, thickened with butter and flour, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 488 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. In a kettle, combine the soaked beans and cold water with bay leaves.

  3. Boil slowly until the beans are well done.

Make the soup

  1. Rub the mixture through a colander.

  2. Return the mixture to the kettle.

  3. Season with salt, white pepper, and thyme if desired.

  4. Blend the butter and flour.

  5. Dissolve the butter and flour mixture in warm water.

  6. Stir the mixture into the soup.

  7. Serve with croutons.

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 + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Provide the main body, starch and earthy flavor of the soup once cooked and puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the soup slightly when dissolved in liquid and stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the soup. Flour clumps if added dry or dropped in undissolved. Blending it with butter and dissolving it in warm water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup smoothly instead of leaving lumps.

Swap the thyme

The recipe marks thyme as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, white pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, white pepper, 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.

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