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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with black beans, veal, onions, wine, lemon, spices, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and add 7 quarts of fresh water and the raw veal.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 hour, skimming the surface.

  4. Add the chopped onions, cloves, allspice, pepper, and salt.

  5. Boil for an additional 3 hours.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup through a colander, gently rubbing the beans to extract flavor.

  2. Cut some of the veal into ½‑inch pieces and return it to the pot.

  3. Add the wine and the sliced lemon, then bring to a boil 3 or 4 times.

  4. In a tureen, place the sliced hard‑boiled eggs and small forced‑meat balls.

  5. Pour the soup over the eggs and meatballs, discarding the knuckle of veal.

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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 release starch that thickens it when rubbed through the strainer.
Raw veal
Adds meaty richness and savory depth to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavor to the broth as they cook down.
Wine
Adds acidity and brightness that lift the flavor of the rich broth.
Lemon
Contributes acidity and fresh citrus aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil the wine and lemon 3 or 4 times. Repeated boiling drives off harsh alcohol and sharpness, while the acid stays in the broth. Boiling too briefly leaves the wine raw and the lemon flavor sharp and unbalanced.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, veal, wine, sherry, lemon, egg, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, veal, wine, sherry, lemon, egg, clove. 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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