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Black- Bean Soup

A hearty soup of black beans, beef, pork, celery, carrots, spices, topped with eggs, lemon, ketchup, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black- Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the soaked beans with the beef and pork for five hours.

  2. Add the chopped celery, grated carrots, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup in a tureen topped with sliced hard boiled eggs, lemon slices, tomato ketchup, and toast squares.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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 starchy thickness of the soup as they break down during long boiling.
Beef
Adds savoury depth and richness to the broth as its flavour and gelatin release during simmering.
Pork
Contributes fat and savoury richness, helping give the broth a fuller, rounder body.
Celery
Adds a fresh, slightly vegetal aroma that balances the rich meats and beans.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and colour to the soup as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Boil the soaked beans with the beef and pork for five hours. Beans must be fully softened before they thicken the soup; a gentle, steady simmer over a long time breaks them down and tenderises the meat, while a hard rolling boil can toughen meat and break beans unevenly.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, celery, carrot, clove, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, celery, carrot, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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