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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup of black beans, beef, salt pork, carrot, onion, and hard‑boiled eggs, served hot with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans in water for 24 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the chopped beef, chopped salt pork, soaked beans, grated carrot, and chopped onion.

  2. Add enough water to cover the ingredients and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 6 hours until the beans are tender.

  4. Strain the soup and return it to the pot.

  5. Stir in the chopped hard boiled eggs, and season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with sliced lemon on the side.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they cook down and soften.
Round beef
Adds savory meaty flavor and richness to the broth during long simmering.
Salt pork
Contributes fat and salty, smoky depth that flavors the whole pot.
Onion
Builds aromatic sweetness and savory base flavor as it cooks into the broth.
Hard boiled eggs
Add a soft, mild richness and body when stirred into the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmering until the beans are tender. Dried beans need long, gentle simmering to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm, and a hard boil can break skins and cloud the broth. Keep the heat low and check tenderness before straining.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, beans, carrot, onion, egg, 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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