Skip to main content
Main

Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans, onion, celery, butter, flour, and seasonings, served with sliced hard-boiled eggs and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and add cold water.

Cook the soup

  1. Slice the onion.

  2. Cook the sliced onion for five minutes with half the butter.

  3. Add the onion and broken celery stalks to the beans.

  4. Simmer the mixture for three to four hours, adding more water as it boils away until the beans are soft.

  5. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  6. Reheat the soup to boiling.

  7. Add salt, pepper, mustard, and cayenne mixed together.

  8. Mix the soup with the remaining butter and flour cooked together.

Serve

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs and lemon into thin slices, removing seeds.

  2. Place the slices in a tureen and strain the soup over them.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor from the onion into the soup.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide a soft, mild garnish that adds texture to the served soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy flavor of the beans.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans until soft. Beans must cook long enough to break down fully; undercooked beans stay firm and grainy, and adding water as it evaporates keeps them submerged so they cook evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, mustard, celery, flour, egg, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes