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Black Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked black beans, seasoned with bay leaf, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, celery, onion, carrot, and lemon, finished with hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight in cold water to cover.

  2. Drain the beans, add fresh cold water, bring to a boil, and simmer until soft.

  3. Force the cooked beans through a puree strainer.

Make the seasoning

  1. In a pan, cook the seasoning (bay leaf, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, celery, onion, and carrot) in butter for five minutes.

  2. Add flour to the seasoning and cook for one minute.

  3. Combine the seasoning mixture with the soup, then add salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Place sliced lemon and hard boiled egg in a serving tureen.

  2. Strain the hot soup over them.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 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 as they break down into a thick purée.
Butter
Carries the aromatics' flavour and adds richness to the seasoning base.
Flour
Cooked briefly with butter to thicken the soup slightly.
Celery
Adds aromatic savoury flavour to the seasoning base.
Onion
Adds aromatic savoury flavour to the seasoning base.

The step that matters

Force the cooked beans through a puree strainer. Beans must be fully softened before straining; undercooked beans stay grainy and resist passing through, leaving a coarse texture in the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, parsley, clove, butter, flour, celery, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, parsley, clove, butter, flour, celery, pepper. 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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