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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with black beans, water, salt, pepper, cayenne, flour, butter, lemon, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and cayenne, then bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer until beans are tender, about 1–2 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Add the roux to the soup and stir until thickened.

  3. Serve with lemon juice and sliced hard‑boiled eggs on top.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 main body of the soup and give it its texture once simmered until tender.
Butter
Provides fat and flavor for the roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy flavor of the beans.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft texture as a topping.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans until tender. Beans cooked too briefly stay firm and grainy, while the starch they release during long simmering helps body the broth. Check tenderness rather than relying only on the time given.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, lemon, egg. 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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