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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, onions, spices, and thickened with a butter‑flour roux, served with hard‑boiled eggs and lemon wedges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans, then place them in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Add salt, chopped onion, black pepper, cayenne, and mustard to the pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until beans are tender.

  3. In a separate pan, melt butter and mix with flour to create a roux.

  4. Stir the roux into the soup to thicken it.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup over sliced hard-boiled eggs and lemon wedges.

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

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

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 body of the soup and become tender during simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to make the roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter as a roux.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the roux into the soup. Flour thickens liquid only when its starch is dispersed and heated. Adding the roux in lumps, or without it being cooked smoothly with the butter, can leave clumps and an uneven texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, mustard, flour, butter, lemon, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, mustard, flour, butter, lemon, 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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