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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with black beans, beef, salt pork, carrot, onion, and hard‑boiled eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans in water for 24 hours.

  2. Chop the round beef and salt pork.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef, pork, soaked beans, grated carrot, and onion.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 to 6 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and add the hard boiled eggs, salt, pepper, and sliced lemon.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Provide the main body and starch that thickens the soup as they soften.
Round beef
Adds savory meaty flavor, and its connective tissue softens into richness during long cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and salty, smoky depth that carries flavor through the broth.
Onion
Contributes aroma and gentle sweetness as it cooks down into the broth.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and color to balance the salty pork and beef.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 to 6 hours. A long, gentle simmer slowly breaks down the beef's connective tissue and softens the beans. A hard, rolling boil can break the beans apart and leave the broth cloudy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, beans, carrot, onion, egg, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, beans, carrot, onion, egg, 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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