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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, stock, butter, flour, and seasonings, finished with sherry, lemon, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight, then drain.

  2. Add the parsley, celery root, bay leaf, peppercorns, clove, and onion tied in cheesecloth.

  3. Cover with cold water and boil slowly until tender, adding water as needed.

Make the soup

  1. Once the beans are soft, remove the seasonings and mash the beans through a sieve.

  2. Stir in the soup stock.

  3. Melt the butter, mix in the flour, and gradually add the stock.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, add the sherry wine, lemon slice, egg balls, and diced egg white just 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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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, once mashed, give it its thick texture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor when melted with the flour as the base of the thickening.
Flour
Thickens the soup with the melted butter, giving it body as the stock is added.
Soup stock
Supplies the liquid that makes the soup and carries its savory flavor.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a mellow aroma when added to the soup in the tureen.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter, flour, and stock. Flour must be cooked briefly in melted butter and stock added gradually, or lumps form and the soup thickens unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, flour, parsley, celery, clove, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, flour, parsley, celery, clove, 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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