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Black Bean Soup

A hearty soup of soaked black beans, beef stock, spices, lemon, hard‑boiled eggs, port wine, brandy, and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Boil the beans in 2 quarts of water until tender.

  3. Strain the beans through a sieve and add to the beef stock.

Season and serve

  1. Stir in cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and lemon slices.

  2. Just before serving, add forcemeat balls, port wine, and brandy to every 3 quarts of soup.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beans + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 of the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, mild richness and substance to the soup.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the forcemeat balls, port and brandy just before serving. Forcemeat balls are delicate and can break down or toughen if held in hot liquid too long. Adding the wine and brandy at the end keeps their aromas bright, since alcohol evaporates when heated for extended periods.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, cinnamon, pepper, lemon, egg, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, cinnamon, pepper, lemon, egg, port wine. 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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