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Black Bean Soup

A soup of soaked black beans simmered with stock, butter, flour, seasonings, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Drain the water from the beans.

  3. Tie the seasonings together in a cheese cloth and add them to the beans.

  4. Cover the beans with cold water and boil slowly until tender, adding water as needed.

  5. When the beans are soft, remove the seasonings.

Make the soup

  1. Pass the beans through a sieve, mashing them with a spoon.

  2. Add the soup stock to the beans.

  3. Melt the butter, stir in the flour, and gradually stir into the stock.

  4. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add two tablespoonfuls of sherry wine, a thin slice of lemon, egg balls, and the white of an egg cut in to the soup just before serving.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

261Calories
8 gProtein
12 gFat
25 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 9 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Black Bean1/2 cup canned (120g) drained114
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Celery1 stalk (40g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Soupnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Form the soup's main body; mashing them through a sieve thickens the liquid.
Soup stock
Supplies the liquid and savory flavor base for the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the soup.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth when stirred in near the end.

The step that matters

Boil the beans slowly and keep them covered with water. Vigorous boiling can break the skins and leave the beans unevenly cooked, while letting them dry out stops them softening. Keeping them submerged and simmering gently gives even tenderness, which matters because the beans are mashed to form the soup's body.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, sherry, wine, celery, clove, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, sherry, wine, celery, clove, pepper. 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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