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Black Bean Soup or Split Pea Soup

A hearty soup made from black beans or split peas, thickened with a roux of fat and flour, seasoned with lemon and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup or Split Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak and cook the beans or peas in 2 quarts of water until very soft.

  2. Put the cooked beans or peas through a sieve to make a pulp.

  3. Add enough water or stock to the pulp to make 2 quarts of soup.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix 2 tablespoons of fat with 2 tablespoons of flour.

  2. Add a little hot soup to the fat and flour mixture, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to the remaining soup, stirring to prevent lumps.

  4. Cook for about 10 minutes.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and mustard.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Black beans or split peas
Form the main body of the soup once cooked and sieved into a pulp.
Fat
Combines with the flour to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with the fat and hot liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the roux to the soup. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Stirring a little hot soup into the fat and flour first makes a smooth paste, and stirring while adding it to the rest of the soup prevents lumps as the starch hydrates and thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

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