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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup of black beans, stock, vegetables, force meat balls, hard‑boiled eggs, and lemon slices, seasoned with cayenne, thyme, allspice, and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,077 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Wash and soak the black beans overnight in tepid water.

  2. In the morning, add the soaked beans to the stock with salt, cayenne, thyme, onions, tomatoes, celery, allspice, cloves, and catsup.

  3. Maintain the stock level by adding boiling water as needed.

  4. Cook until the beans are soft, then strain through a colander.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, place the force meat balls, hard-boiled eggs, and lemon slices.

  2. Pour the boiling soup over the ingredients and serve.

  3. Optionally, add a wine glass of wine.

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. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  2. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Soften during long cooking and thicken the soup body as they break down.
Beef or veal stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock as it simmers.
Onions
Contribute savoury sweetness and aroma as they cook into the stock.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the soup base.

The step that matters

Cook until the beans are soft, then strain. Beans must be fully tender before straining, since undercooked beans stay firm and will not break down to thicken the soup or pass cleanly through the colander.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, beef, pepper, thyme, onion, tomato, celery):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, beef, pepper, thyme, onion, tomato, celery. 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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