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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with black beans, onion, fat meat, garlic, and served with sliced hard boiled eggs and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Drain the soaked black beans and place them in a kettle.

  2. Add cold water to cover the beans and include the chopped onion, fat meat, salt, garlic, and pepper.

  3. Cook for about 3 hours, adding water or stock as it boils away, until the beans are soft enough to press through a sieve.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, layer the sliced hard boiled eggs and lemon.

  2. Pour the hot soup over the eggs and lemon in the tureen.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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
Provide the main body of the soup, softening during long cooking until they can be pressed smooth.
Fat meat
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the long simmer into the broth.
Hard boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild contrast in texture when layered in the tureen under the hot soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that cut through the rich, earthy soup.

The step that matters

Cook until the beans are soft enough to press through a sieve. Beans need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Adding water as it boils away keeps the beans submerged and cooking evenly, and undercooked beans will not press into a smooth soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, meat, garlic, pepper, egg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, meat, garlic, pepper, 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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