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Turtle Bean Soup

A hearty soup of beans, meat, lemon, and eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Turtle Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Drain the water.

  3. Add fresh water and bring to a boil.

  4. Drain through a colander.

  5. Place the beans in a pot with more water and the meat.

  6. Boil for five hours.

Make the soup

  1. Strain through a sieve.

  2. Mash the beans to pass through the skins.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the pot.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Add the lemon slices and chopped hard-boiled eggs to the tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the lemon and eggs.

  3. Add wine if desired.

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

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the soup, thickening it as they break down and pass through the sieve.
Veal, cold beef, or mutton
Adds meaty flavor and richness to the broth during the long simmer.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and body when floated in the soup.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that cuts the richness of the meat and broth.

The step that matters

Boil for five hours. A long, steady simmer is needed to fully soften the beans and draw flavor from the meat. Too little time leaves the beans firm and the broth thin, so they will not mash smoothly through the sieve.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, lemon, egg, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, egg, 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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