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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, stock, butter, flour, and seasonings, finished with sherry, lemon, egg balls, and diced egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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, then drain.

  2. Add the parsley, celery root, bay leaf, peppercorns, and clove in a cheesecloth bag.

  3. Cover with cold water and boil slowly until tender, adding water as needed.

Make the soup

  1. Once soft, remove the seasonings and pass the beans through a sieve, mashing them with a spoon.

  2. Add the stock to the mashed beans.

  3. Melt the butter, stir in the flour, and gradually mix into the stock.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, add the sherry wine, lemon slice, egg balls, and diced egg white just before serving.

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 when cooked and passed through a sieve.
Soup stock
Provides the liquid base that thins and flavours the mashed beans.
Butter
Melted with flour to make a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Combined with melted butter to thicken the stock smoothly.
Sherry wine
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of acidity when added at serving.

The step that matters

Thickening with the butter and flour. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter before liquid is added, and the stock should be added gradually while stirring. This prevents lumps and a raw floury taste, giving a smooth, evenly thickened soup.

Swap the beans

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

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

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