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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with soaked black beans, beef, salt pork, carrots, onions, and hard‑boiled eggs, finished with lemon and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine soaked black beans and water.

  2. Add beef, salt pork, pepper, coarse sea salt, grated carrot, and chopped onions.

  3. Bring to a boil and simmer for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander.

  5. Strain the soup stock through a thin cloth to remove solids.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in sliced hard boiled eggs and lemon, adding wine or brandy just before serving.

  2. Fry the pork and serve it in the soup cut into small pieces.

  3. For extra flavor, boil the salt pork separately and add the cooking water to the soup.

  4. Add a red onion two hours before finishing for color and flavor, or roast any available onions before adding.

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. Pepper + carrottop 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
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Beef
Adds savory meaty depth to the broth as it simmers for hours.
Salt pork
Contributes fat and salty, savory flavor to the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the broth.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, mild texture to the finished soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the heavy, earthy flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Strain the soup. Straining removes the softened beans and solids so the broth becomes smooth and clear; skipping or rushing it leaves the soup gritty and cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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