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Black Bean Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Cook the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and boil them in 3 quarts of stock for 4 hours, adding water as needed.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Strain the soup when the beans are thoroughly cooked.

Serve

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

  2. Pour the soup over the lemon and eggs and serve with crackers or 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
Break down during long simmering to give the strained soup its body and thickness.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries most of the savoury flavour of the soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy flavour of the beans.
Hard boiled eggs
Add a mild, creamy texture that contrasts with the smooth soup.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until thoroughly tender. Beans must be fully softened before straining, because they release starch that gives the soup its body. Undercooked beans stay firm and grainy, so the strained soup turns out thin and gritty.

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.

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