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Black Bean Soup

A bean soup made with soaked black beans, celery, onion, and seasonings, finished with sherry wine and served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans in 2 quarts of cold water overnight.

  2. Strain the soaked beans.

  3. Add the strained beans to 2 quarts of fresh water.

  4. Cook the beans over low heat until done.

  5. Strain the cooked beans.

  6. If the soup is too thick, add a little water.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the celery and onion in butter.

  2. Add the fried celery and onion to the soup.

  3. Stir in the salt, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Cook the flour in butter until smooth.

  5. Add the cooked flour to the soup.

  6. Add the sherry wine to the soup.

  7. Adjust seasoning with more Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, and salt if needed.

Serve

  1. Place the sliced hard-boiled egg and lemon in the tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the egg and lemon.

  3. Fry bread in butter to make croutons.

  4. Serve the soup with croutons.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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 give it its thick, earthy texture.
Celery and onion
Fried in butter, they add savoury aroma and flavour to the base.
Flour
Cooked in butter first, it thickens the soup and smooths its texture.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a deeper, aromatic flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in butter until smooth. Flour must be cooked in fat before it meets liquid; otherwise it clumps and stays raw-tasting. Cooking it smooth lets it thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, sauce, tomato, ketchup, pepper, celery, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, sauce, tomato, ketchup, pepper, celery, butter. 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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