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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with soaked black beans, veal, salt pork, onion, and a lemon‑wine egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak black beans overnight in 1 quart of water.

  2. In the morning, add 3 quarts of water and boil with the onion, veal, and salt pork.

Make the soup

  1. Once thoroughly boiled, press the beans through a sieve.

  2. Keep the soup hot on the stove.

Serve

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and place them in a tureen with sliced lemon and wine.

  2. Pour the hot soup over the mixture in the tureen.

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

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

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  5. 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 body and thicken the soup when pressed through a sieve.
Veal knuckle
Adds meaty depth and body to the broth as it simmers.
Salt pork
Contributes fat and savoury flavour to the simmering broth.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks enrich the soup with richness and body in the tureen.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the finished soup.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the mixture in the tureen.

The step that matters

Pour the hot soup over the mixture in the tureen. The soup must be very hot so it warms and blends the mashed yolks, lemon and wine evenly. Pouring in a steady stream while stirring helps the yolk emulsify smoothly rather than clumping.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, veal, pork, egg, wine):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, veal, pork, egg, wine. 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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