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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup of black beans, ham, spices, and lemon, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and boil them in fresh water with baking soda, ham, allspice, cloves, parsley, and thyme.

  3. Brown the onion in butter and add it to the soup.

Simmer and finish

  1. Simmer for 4 hours or until the beans are soft, adding cold water as needed to maintain about 2 quarts.

  2. Press the soup through a sieve.

  3. Stir in salt, pepper, cayenne, juice from the lemon, chopped hard boiled egg, and sherry wine if using.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cooking water, helping the beans soften more quickly.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the broth during the long simmer.
Butter
Carries the browned onion flavor and adds richness to the soup.
Onion
Browned first to add sweetness and savory depth to the soup.
Lemon
Juice adds acidity that brightens the heavy, earthy flavor of the beans.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beans are soft, topping up the water. Dried beans need long, steady simmering to become fully tender. Letting the liquid drop too low can leave beans firm and scorch the bottom of the pot, so cold water is added to keep the soup at its intended volume.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, allspice, clove, parsley, thyme, butter, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, allspice, clove, parsley, thyme, butter, onion. 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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