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Recipe for Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup of black beans, meat, and eggs, finished with ketchup and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Recipe for Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight, then drain.

Cook the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the beans, onion, water, chicken (or beef and bacon).

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the beans are tender and the meat is cooked.

  3. Remove the meat, chop it, and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Form the seasoned meat into balls, roll them in egg white, and dry them on the stove.

  5. Strain the soup to remove the beans and add ketchup, sherry, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and the meatballs.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Egg white
Forms a thin coating on the meatballs that helps them hold their shape.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the soup as they are stirred in.
Sherry
Adds a mellow, aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Drying the meatballs on the stove. Meatballs rolled in egg white must dry until the coating sets; if they go into the soup wet, the coating can loosen and cloud the broth.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, chicken, pepper, sherry, egg):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, chicken, pepper, sherry, egg. 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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