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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, stock, butter, flour, and seasonings, finished with sherry, lemon, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley 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 black beans overnight, then drain.

  2. Add the beans to a pot with cold water and the seasonings tied in cheesecloth.

  3. Boil slowly until the beans are tender, adding water as needed.

Make the soup

  1. Once soft, remove the seasonings and mash the beans through a sieve.

  2. Stir the stock into the mashed beans.

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

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, add the sherry wine, lemon slice, egg balls, and diced egg white just before serving.

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. Celery + parsleytop 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 body of the soup once cooked and mashed through a sieve.
Butter
Carries flavor and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked in butter and stirred in.
Sherry wine
Adds a sweet, aromatic note when added to the tureen before serving.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the stock. Flour lumps if added directly to hot liquid. Cooking it in melted butter first coats each grain, letting it disperse smoothly and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, flour, celery, clove, parsley, 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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