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Black Bean

A hearty soup of soaked black beans, soup bone stock, onions, spices, butter, and sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Rinse the beans well and boil them thoroughly in the morning.

Make the soup

  1. Once cooked, mash the beans through a colander and add to the soup stock made from the soup bone.

  2. Add the seasoning, fried onions, and butter.

  3. When ready to serve, add the sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 when cooked and mashed, giving it thickness and earthy flavour.
Soup bone
Releases savoury flavour and body into the stock the beans are added to.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onions
Fried until sweet and aromatic, adding depth of flavour to the soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Added sliced at the end as a mild, creamy garnish component.

The step that matters

Boil the beans thoroughly. Dried beans contain lectins that are only destroyed by thorough boiling, and beans that are undercooked stay firm and do not mash smoothly into the soup. Boil until fully tender before mashing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, cinnamon, clove, allspice, lemon, butter, pepper):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, cinnamon, clove, allspice, lemon, butter, 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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