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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, vegetables, spices, wine, lemon, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Drain the soaked beans and add them to a large pot with 7 quarts of water.

  2. Add the chopped carrot, turnip, cloves, allspice, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil gently for 3 hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve, using the back of a spoon to press it through.

  2. Wash the pot and return the strained soup to it.

  3. Stir in the wine, lemon slices, chopped eggs, ketchup or Worcestershire sauce, and butter.

  4. Heat until warmed through and serve.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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, once pressed through a sieve, thicken it.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a mild, creamy richness to the soup.
Lemon
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the earthy beans.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 hours. A gentle simmer lets the dried beans soften fully and release starch, which thickens the soup. A hard boil can break the beans apart and cloud the broth.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, clove, allspice, pepper, wine, lemon):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, clove, allspice, pepper, wine, lemon. 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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