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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with soaked black beans, onion, garlic, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans overnight in water.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans.

Cook the soup

  1. In a pot, heat olive oil over medium heat.

  2. Add onion and garlic, sauté until soft.

  3. Add beans, water, salt, pepper, and bay leaf.

  4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours until beans are tender.

  5. Remove bay leaf 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 as they cook tender.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it sautés, building the soup's base flavour.
Garlic
Adds aroma that mellows and deepens during gentle sautéing in oil.
Olive oil
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and fat to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beans are tender. Dried beans must cook long enough to soften fully, since undercooked beans stay firm and starchy. Salt added before cooking can slow softening in some beans, so check tenderness rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, garlic, pepper, olive):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, garlic, pepper, olive. 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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