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Turtle Bean Soup

A hearty soup of turtle beans, onions, eggs, and lemon, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turtle Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick over and wash the turtle beans in cold water, then soak them overnight in cold water.

  2. Four hours before dinner, place the beans in 4 quarts of cold water and heat gradually to boiling.

Cook the soup

  1. Boil the beans gently for about 3 hours until tender enough to be rubbed through a sieve.

  2. Add marjoram, salt, pepper, and the clove-studded onion when the beans first start to boil.

  3. Once the beans are tender, rub them through a sieve and return to the soup kettle.

  4. Mix butter and flour into a smooth paste, stir into the beans, and add enough boiling water to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  5. Season to taste, let boil for 2 minutes, and serve hot with hard-boiled egg and sliced lemon.

  6. Add sherry or Madeira just before serving for enhanced flavor.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Hard-boil the eggs. Remove the shells from the eggs. Cut the eggs into small slices or dice.

  2. Place the egg pieces in a soup tureen and add sliced lemon just 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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  2. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and thicken it when rubbed through a sieve.
Eggs
Add a firm, mild protein garnish that contrasts with the smooth soup.
Butter
Adds richness and body when cooked with flour into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth, cream-like consistency with the butter.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy beans.

The step that matters

Rubbing the beans through a sieve. The beans must be fully tender before sieving; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not pass smoothly, leaving the soup lumpy and uneven in texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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