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Turtle Bean Soup

A hearty soup made with turtle beans, soup meat, onion, herbs, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne, finished with 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: 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 the beans and meat

  1. Pick over and wash the turtle beans.

  2. Place them in a pot with 3 quarts of cold water and the soup meat.

  3. Bring to a boil slowly, skimming until clear.

  4. Peel the onion, stick it with 10 cloves, and add it to the soup with the bouquet of herbs.

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

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Remove the shells.

  3. Chop the yolks finely.

  4. Place them in a soup tureen.

Finish the soup

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

  2. Rub the beans and onion through a sieve into the pot.

  3. Season the soup with 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt, 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper, and cayenne to taste.

  4. Heat until hot, then pour over the egg in the tureen.

  5. Slice the lemon thin and add it to the soup before serving.

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle beans
Form the body of the soup, thickened when rubbed through a sieve.
Eggs
Hard-boiled and chopped, they add richness and texture in the tureen.
Soup meat
Flavors the broth as it simmers with the beans.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the broth and is rubbed through with the beans.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth as it comes to a boil. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the soup and taint its flavor, so the broth stays clear.

Swap the onion

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

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

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