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Black Bean Soup

A soup made from black beans, seasoned with salt, white pepper, optional thyme, and thickened with a butter‑flour roux, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 488 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the black beans slowly until well done.

  2. Rub the beans through a colander and return to the kettle.

  3. Season with salt, white pepper, and thyme if desired.

Thicken and serve

  1. Blend the butter and flour, then dissolve in warm water.

  2. Stir the mixture into the soup.

  3. Serve with croutons.

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 + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Form the soup's body when rubbed through a colander, giving it a smooth, thick texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the butter-flour mixture into the soup. Flour only thickens once heated in liquid, and if it is added without being fully dissolved it can form lumps. Dissolving it in warm water first and stirring well helps it blend evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the thyme

The recipe marks thyme as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, white pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Thymethe original

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