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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, corned beef, pepper, cloves, eggs, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, boil the beans until they are soft.

Make the soup

  1. Add pieces of corned beef to the pot and boil until the beans are very soft.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander and return it to the soup kettle.

  3. If the soup is too thick, add warm water to reach the desired consistency.

  4. Season with pepper and ground cloves.

  5. Before serving, stir in the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  6. Add wine for flavor if desired, but the soup is good without it.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  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 + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 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 boiling.
Corned beef
Adds salty, savory meat flavor to the broth as it simmers with the beans.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, mild richness and body when stirred into the hot soup.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until very soft. Beans that are not fully softened stay firm and grainy, and they cannot break down to give the soup its body. Cooking them long enough lets the starches release and thicken the liquid.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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