Name: Black Bean Soup.
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon pepper.; ¼ teaspoon mustard.; Few grains cayenne.; 3 tablespoons butter.; 1½ tablespoons flour.; 2 hard boiled eggs.; 1 lemon.; 1 pint black beans.; 2 quarts cold water.; 1 small onion.; 2 stalks celery, or; ¼ teaspoon celery salt.; ½ tablespoon salt.

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book

Fannie Merritt Farmer · 1896

Preserved from a verified first printing and organized as a working browser of recipes, menus, and reference sections. Recipe text remains verbatim to the 1896 book, with Kitchen Notes kept separate from the source text.

The book first appeared in 1896 after Farmer financed publication herself when Little, Brown doubted that a manual built on precise level measurements would find a wide readership. Its success brought the book into regular trade publication and helped fix cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons as the standard language of American recipe writing.

Born in Boston in 1857, Farmer went on to lead the Boston Cooking-School and to codify the level cup, tablespoon, and teaspoon that still structure American recipe writing. Her book is both a practical manual and a record of how domestic instruction was formalized at the end of the nineteenth century.

The book below keeps the table of contents, recipe cards, scanned page links, and menu structure together so the original volume can still be read and cooked from as a whole.

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Soups, chowders, and soup preparations

Black Bean Soup.

121-122 · First Edition, 1896

Ingredients

1 teaspoon pepper.
¼ teaspoon mustard.
Few grains cayenne.
3 tablespoons butter.
1½ tablespoons flour.
2 hard boiled eggs.
1 lemon.
1 pint black beans.
2 quarts cold water.
1 small onion.
2 stalks celery, or
¼ teaspoon celery salt.
½ tablespoon salt.

Method

Soak beans over night; in the morning drain and add cold water.
Slice onion, and cook five minutes with half the butter, adding to beans, with celery stalks broken in pieces.
Simmer three or four hours, or until beans are soft; add more water as water boils away.
Rub through a sieve, reheat to the boiling point, and add salt, pepper, mustard, and cayenne well mixed.
Bind with remaining butter and flour cooked together.
Cut eggs in thin slices, and lemon in thin slices, removing seeds.
Put in tureen, and strain the soup over them.

Original 1896 Text

Black Bean Soup. 1 teaspoon pepper. ¼ teaspoon mustard. Few grains cayenne. 3 tablespoons butter. 1½ tablespoons flour. 2 hard boiled eggs. 1 lemon. 1 pint black beans. 2 quarts cold water. 1 small onion. 2 stalks celery, or ¼ teaspoon celery salt. ½ tablespoon salt. Soak beans over night; in the morning drain and add cold water. Slice onion, and cook five minutes with half the butter, adding to beans, with celery stalks broken in pieces. Simmer three or four hours, or until beans are soft; add more water as water boils away. Rub through a sieve, reheat to the boiling point, and add salt, pepper, mustard, and cayenne well mixed. Bind with remaining butter and flour cooked together. Cut eggs in thin slices, and lemon in thin slices, removing seeds. Put in tureen, and strain the soup over them.