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Turtle Bean Soup

A hearty soup of turtle beans, onions, hard‑boiled eggs, lemon, and optional sherry.

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

Soak and cook the beans

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

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

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

  4. Add marjoram, salt, pepper, and the onion with cloves when the beans first start to boil.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Hard-boil the eggs. Remove the shells from the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Cut the eggs into small slices or dice.

  3. Place the egg pieces in a soup tureen.

  4. Add sliced lemon just before serving.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the beans through a sieve. Return the beans to the soup kettle.

  2. Mix butter and flour into a smooth paste. Stir the paste into the beans.

  3. Add boiling water to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  4. Season the soup to taste. Let the soup boil for 2 minutes.

  5. Serve hot with hard-boiled egg and sliced lemon. Add sherry or Madeira just before serving for enhanced flavor.

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
Provide the main body of the soup, which thickens into a smooth purée when rubbed through a sieve.
Eggs
Add a firm, sliced garnish that contrasts with the smooth soup.
Butter and flour
Form a paste that thickens the soup and gives it a creamy richness.

The step that matters

Rub the beans through a sieve. The beans must be fully tender before sieving, since undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly into a creamy soup.

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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