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Black Bean Sout Garnished with Lemon and Parsley

A simple black bean soup flavored with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Black Bean Sout Garnished with Lemon and Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight in water.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans, then place them in a pot with fresh water.

  3. Add baking soda and bring to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Reduce heat and simmer until beans are tender, about 1-2 hours.

  2. Once cooked, strain the beans and mash them to a smooth consistency.

  3. Serve garnished with lemon wedges and chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 thick, earthy texture when mashed.
Baking soda
Raises the pot's pH, which helps beans soften faster during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beans are fully tender. Dried beans need a long, gentle simmer to soften evenly. Stopping early leaves them firm, and mashing undercooked beans gives a grainy, uneven texture instead of a smooth soup.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, parsley. 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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