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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, beef, salt pork, and seasoned with red pepper, wine, egg yolks, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a kettle with the beef and salt pork.

  3. Cover with water and boil for about 5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  2. Season with red pepper and a little wine.

  3. Add the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and slices of lemon.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  5. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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 shank
Adds meaty flavor to the broth during the long boil.
Salt pork
Contributes savory fat and seasoning to the broth.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the strained soup.

The step that matters

Boil for about 5 hours. The beans must cook long enough to soften fully so the mixture can be strained smooth. Too short a boil leaves firm beans that resist breaking down.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, pepper, wine, egg, lemon):

  1. Sesamefits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, wine, egg, lemon. 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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