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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with black beans, beef, salt pork, carrot, onion, and hard‑boiled eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans for 24 hours.

  2. In a large pot, combine the soaked beans, chopped beef, chopped salt pork, grated carrot, and chopped onion.

  3. Add 1 quart of water and bring to a boil.

Simmer and strain

  1. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 6 hours until the beans are tender.

  2. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Add sliced hard boiled eggs, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with sliced lemon.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Black beans
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Round beef
Adds savory depth and body to the broth as it cooks slowly.
Salt pork
Contributes fat and savory flavor that enriches the broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory flavor as it softens in the pot.

The step that matters

Simmering until the beans are tender. Dried beans need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Rushing this with a hard boil can leave them firm or break them apart unevenly, and the soup's texture depends on it.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, beef, pork, carrot, onion, egg, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, beef, pork, carrot, onion, egg, pepper. 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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