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Black Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked black beans, stock, tomatoes, flour, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans in water overnight.

  2. Cook the beans in plenty of cold water the next morning, adding more as it boils away.

  3. Mash the beans through a colander after about 4 hours.

Make the soup

  1. Stir the mashed beans into the boiling stock along with the cooked tomatoes.

  2. Mix the flour with a little water until smooth.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the soup just before serving.

  4. Slice the lemon.

  5. Add the lemon slices to the tureen 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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the soup when mashed.
Cooked tomatoes
Add acidity and savory flavour, along with moisture to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred in as a smooth paste.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the soup. Flour mixed with a little water must be smooth before it goes in, otherwise it forms lumps that do not disperse. Adding it to hot soup just before serving lets it thicken without being overcooked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, 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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