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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with soaked black beans, onion, herbs, corned beef broth, and garnished with hard‑boiled eggs and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans in cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, add the chopped onion, cloves, and herbs to the beans.

  3. Simmer gently until the beans are soft.

  4. Rinse the mixture through a colander and return it to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the corned beef broth and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Serve topped with quartered hard-boiled eggs and garnish with lemon slices.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 soften and break down.
Corned beef broth
Adds salty, savory flavor and liquid that carries the beans during the final boil.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks into the beans.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy contrast to the beans as a topping.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the beans are soft. Boiling hard can break the skins and make the beans burst unevenly, leaving a cloudy, mushy texture. Gentle heat softens the beans evenly while they keep their shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, parsley, clove, thyme, marjoram, beef, egg):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, parsley, clove, thyme, marjoram, beef, 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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