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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans simmered in beef stock, served hot with sliced hard boiled egg and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,474 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  2. In the morning, wash the beans clean.

Cook the soup

  1. Put the beans in a pot with the beef stock and boil slowly for six hours.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the pot.

  3. Season the soup to taste.

Serve

  1. Place the sliced hard boiled egg and lemon in the bottom of a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup into the tureen and serve very hot.

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. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

  2. Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

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

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 earthy flavor of the soup, thickening it when pureed through a sieve.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the savory flavor throughout the soup.

The step that matters

Slow simmer for six hours. Keep the soup at a slow simmer for the full six hours. A hard boil can break the beans apart and cloud the broth, while long gentle cooking softens them fully so they pass through the sieve smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Pumpkinfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, 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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