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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with soaked black beans, onion, celery, butter, flour, and seasonings, served with sliced lemon and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight, then drain and rinse thoroughly.

  2. In a pot, fry the chopped onion in 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. Add the beans, cold water, and celery to the pot.

  4. Cook slowly for 3 to 4 hours until the beans are soft, adding more water as needed.

Strain and thicken

  1. Rub the mixture through a strainer.

  2. Add the seasonings and heat.

  3. In a separate saucepan, heat the remaining butter.

  4. Add the flour.

  5. Gradually stir in the soup until well blended.

Serve

  1. Slice the lemon and hard boiled eggs thinly.

  2. Serve them in the soup.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  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 rubbed through a strainer.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the onion is fried and the flour is cooked.
Flour
Cooked in butter and stirred into the soup to thicken it.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft texture and mild richness as a sliced garnish in the soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy soup.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the soup until well blended. Adding the soup to the flour and butter a little at a time keeps the flour smooth. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps, so the thickening is uneven.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, pepper, mustard, butter, flour, 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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