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Recipe for Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup of black beans, chicken or beef, bacon, onion, and hard‑boiled eggs, finished with sherry and tomato catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Recipe for Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine one pint of black beans or turtle beans, 1 small onion, 4 quarts of water, 1 small chicken, or ½ large one, or else 1 lb. beef and a slice of middling bacon.

  2. When the soup is nearly done, chop up the meat which has been boiled in it.

Make the meat balls

  1. Season it with pepper and salt and make it into balls.

  2. Roll them in egg white and dry them on the stove.

Finish and serve

  1. When the soup is ready to be served, strain off the beans, add a wineglass of walnut or tomato catsup and a wineglass of good sherry, then add the chopped hard‑boiled eggs and the meat balls to the soup.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

495Calories
50 gProtein
15 gFat
32 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Chicken100g cooked165
Black Bean1/2 cup canned (120g) drained114
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Bacon1 slice cooked (8g)43
Walnut1 walnut half (4g)26
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Waternot 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 Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.). Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beans + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Beans + chickentop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Sherry + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together891 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 give it its earthy flavor and thickness.
Egg white
Binds the meat balls' surface so they hold together and dry to a firm coat.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild texture and body to the finished soup.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of acidity to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Drying the meat balls on the stove. Rolled meat balls need their egg white coat to dry and set before they go into the soup; wet coating can slide off or cook unevenly, so drying gives a firm, intact exterior.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, sherry, onion, chicken, egg):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, sherry, onion, chicken, egg. 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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