Skip to main content
Main

Black Bean Soup

Soup of soaked black beans simmered in stock, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with sliced lemon, hard boiled eggs, and crackers or toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and place them in a pot with the stock.

Cook the soup

  1. Boil for four hours, adding water as needed.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Once the beans are tender, strain the soup.

Serve

  1. Slice the lemon and hard boiled eggs thinly and place them in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the lemon and eggs.

  3. Serve with crackers or squares of toasted bread.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 strained.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base and savory flavor in which the beans cook.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy soup.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil for four hours, adding water as needed. Dried beans need prolonged simmering to become fully tender. Adding water keeps the beans submerged so they cook evenly and the soup does not scorch or reduce too far.

Swap the beans

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes