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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, salt pork, black turtle beans, carrot, onion, served with hard boiled eggs and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black turtle beans overnight.

  2. Cut the beef and salt pork into pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the beef, salt pork, and soaked beans in water for six hours.

  2. Add the grated carrot and onion to the pot.

  3. Strain the soup and serve with slices of hard boiled egg and lemon.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Provides meaty flavor and body to the broth during long simmering.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the broth.
Black turtle beans
Thicken the soup as they break down during the long boil.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavor to the soup base.
Onion
Contributes aroma and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil the beef, salt pork, and soaked beans in water for six hours. A gentle, sustained simmer lets the beef and beans release flavor and gelatin slowly, while a hard boil can toughen the meat and cloud the broth. Keep the pot at a steady simmer and top up water as needed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, pepper, beans, carrot, onion, egg):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, beans, carrot, onion, egg. 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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