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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 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.

  2. Top 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
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Beef
Adds savory meaty flavor and richness to the broth during long cooking.
Pork
Adds savory depth and fat to the broth during long cooking.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavor to the soup base.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the soup.

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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