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Black-Bean Soup

A hearty soup made from soaked black beans simmered with vegetables, spices, stock, and finished with a roux, served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Black-Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans in 3 quarts of water overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a saucepan with 3 quarts of fresh water.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 6 hours until water is reduced to 1 quart.

Make the soup

  1. Finely chop and fry the onion, carrot, turnip, and celery in butter, then add to the beans.

  2. Add the sweet herbs, allspice, cloves, mace, cinnamon, and stock to the beans.

  3. In a frying pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and stir in 1 tablespoon of flour until brown, then add to the soup.

  4. Simmer the soup for 1 hour.

  5. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a soup tureen and serve with lemon slices.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 break down during long simmering.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth when fried in butter before being added.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Browned in butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Stock
Adds savory body and depth of flavor to the soup base.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour browned in butter forms a roux; if it is taken too far it turns bitter, and if stirred in raw it thickens unevenly and can leave lumps, so it should be cooked gently and whisked into the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, allspice, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, allspice, clove. 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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