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Turtle Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with turtle beans, soup meat, onion, garlic, herbs, eggs, lemon, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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

  1. Pick over the beans, wash them, and place them in a pot with the meat and 3 quarts of cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming until clear.

  3. Peel the onion, stick it with the cloves, and add it to the soup with a bouquet of herbs.

Simmer and strain

  1. Let it boil gently for about 2 hours, adding ⅓ cup of cold water every 15 minutes.

  2. When the beans are soft, remove the meat and save it for another dish.

  3. Rub the beans and onion through a sieve into the soup.

Season and serve

  1. Boil the eggs hard, remove the shells, chop the yolks finely, and add them to the soup tureen.

  2. Return the soup to the heat, season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  3. Once hot, pour it into the tureen, add thin slices of lemon, and serve.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle beans
Provide the body and thickening, since rubbing them through a sieve gives the soup its texture.
Soup meat
Flavors the broth as it simmers with the beans and onion.
Eggs
Hard-boiled yolks, chopped fine and added to the tureen, contribute richness and a mild, creamy flavor.
Lemon
Adds acidity and a bright citrus aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the beans and onion through a sieve. Pressing cooked beans through a sieve breaks them into a smooth purée that thickens the broth. Beans must be fully soft first, or they will not pass through cleanly and the soup stays grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, lemon, egg, meat, clove, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, lemon, egg, meat, clove, pepper. 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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