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Black Bean Soup
(Spain.) Brown one onion with 1 ounce butter, add 1 pint of black beans soaked over night and drained, 1/2 a shin of beef and 3 quarts of water, 1 teaspoonful of allspice and cloves, tied in a bit of muslin, some parsley and thyme. Cook 4 hours, press through a sieve, add salt and pepper, 1 hard-boiled egg, and 1 lemon, sliced, and 1 glass of sherry.
A long-simmered bean and beef-shin broth finished with the three garnishes that mark it as Spanish in style: hard-boiled egg, lemon and sherry. Nothing here is difficult, but the seasoning instructions are terse and the straining step is the whole point of the dish.
- The hinge: strain, then finishThe soup is pressed through a sieve while still hot, and only then seasoned and garnished. Salt, pepper, sherry, egg and lemon all go in after the purée, never into the pot during the four hours.
- A pint of beansDry measure: about 2 cups, roughly 14 oz to 1 lb of black turtle beans, which will swell to some 5 cups soaked. Soak overnight in plenty of cold water and drain, as written.
- Half a shin of beefBeef shin, sold now as shank, usually cross-cut. Half a shin is a vague butcher's portion and a whole shin can run heavier than the phrase suggests; 2 to 3 lb bone-in is a workable amount of gelatin and marrow for 3 quarts of water. Ask for it cut into thick rounds so it fits the pot.
- The spice quantity is ambiguous"1 teaspoonful of allspice and cloves" may mean a teaspoon of each or a teaspoon of the two combined. Cloves dominate quickly; a teaspoon of allspice berries with three or four whole cloves in the muslin bag is the safer reading.
- Cook means simmerFour hours at a bare simmer, lid ajar, skimming the grey foam in the first half hour. A rolling boil emulsifies the shin fat into the broth and clouds the strained soup.
- StrainingA food mill or a stiff sieve and a ladle gives the slightly grainy body the recipe intends. A blender makes it smoother and thicker; if you go that route, thin with some of the cooking liquid. Discard the spice bag and the bones, and return the shin meat to the pot or save it separately.
- The sherryA glass in cookery measures of this kind is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the term is loose. Use dry sherry, fino or amontillado, and add it off the heat so the aroma survives. Sweet cream sherry will unbalance the soup.
- Serving and yieldThree quarts of water reduces to roughly 2 quarts of finished soup, six to eight modest servings. Float the lemon and egg slices on the soup rather than stirring them in; the single egg the recipe allows will not stretch to every bowl.
Black bean soup finished with sherry, lemon and chopped egg belongs to the Spanish and Spanish-Caribbean kitchen, where black turtle beans travelled back from the Americas and settled into the repertoire alongside garbanzos and lentils. This version, from a book that organises its recipes by country of origin, is a cook's shorthand for that tradition: the beans, spices and garnishes are Spanish in spirit, but the half shin of beef and the four-hour stockpot are ordinary Anglo-American soup practice, of a time when a shin bone was the cheapest source of body and gelatin a household could buy. Books of this sort were part of an appetite for cosmopolitan cooking at home, and their national labels are best read as a claim of inspiration rather than authenticity.