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Black Bean Soup

A soup made from soaked black beans, stock, tomatoes, flour, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans in water overnight.

  2. The next morning, cook the beans in plenty of cold water, adding more as it boils away.

  3. After about 4 hours, mash the beans through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Stir the mashed beans into the boiling stock.

  2. Add the cooked tomatoes that have been passed through a colander.

  3. Mix the flour with a little water until smooth, then stir it into the soup just before serving.

  4. Slice the lemon into the tureen just before serving.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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 + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour, thickening the soup when mashed.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly, giving it a smoother body.
Cooked tomatoes
Add acidity and savoury depth to the soup.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the beans.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture in just before serving. Flour mixed with water must be smooth before it goes in, and it should be stirred into hot soup and served soon after. Lumps form if flour is added dry or unevenly, and the soup can thicken or dull if it sits.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, flour):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, flour. 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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