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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup of black beans, smoked ham bone, pepper, lemon, hard boiled eggs, and sherry.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans in plenty of water overnight.

Cook and finish

  1. In the morning, cook the beans with the smoked ham bone in the soaking water until soft.

  2. Mash and strain the mixture.

  3. Add a pinch of pepper and thin with hot water as needed.

  4. Serve with slices of lemon, hard boiled eggs, and sherry.

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

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

  4. Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Beans + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the soup once cooked and mashed.
Smoked ham bone
Contributes smoky, savory flavor to the cooking liquid as it simmers with the beans.
Sherry
Adds a sharp, aromatic note to the finished soup at serving.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until soft. Dried beans need long, thorough cooking to become tender; if they are undercooked, they stay firm and grainy and will not mash or strain smoothly.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Peasfits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, lemon, egg, sherry. 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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