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Black Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked and cooked beans, thickened with butter, flour, and a method similar to lentil soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,080 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook the beans for six hours or more until tender.

  2. Mash the beans through a strainer; you should have five cups after straining.

  3. Thicken the soup using the same method as in lentil soup.

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 + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turtle soup beans
Form the body of the soup, with starch that softens into a thick purée when mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the beans until fully tender. Dried beans need long, thorough cooking because their starch and cell walls only soften fully after extended heat. Undercooked beans stay firm and grainy, so they will not mash smoothly through a strainer.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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