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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made with black beans, beef marrow bone, onions, celery, thyme, ketchup, lemon, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the beans and add 4 quarts of fresh water, chopped onions, chopped celery, salt, cloves, pepper, and thyme.

  3. Add the beef and boil for several hours.

Chill and finish

  1. Set aside until the next day for the fat to rise.

  2. Remove the fat, add the ketchup, and bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Just before serving, add sliced lemon and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Black beans
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it a dark, earthy body.
Marrow-bone of beef or cold roast beef
Releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the broth during long simmering.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato depth to the broth.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that lifts the rich, heavy broth just before serving.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a mild, creamy texture as a garnish in the soup.

The step that matters

Remove the fat after chilling. Fat solidifies on top of the cold soup and can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping this step leaves a greasy, heavy broth with an unpleasant mouthfeel.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, beef, ketchup, lemon, egg, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, beef, ketchup, lemon, egg, thyme. 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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