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Turtle Bean Soup

A soup made with black beans, water, beef bones or salt pork, seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, lemon juice, and served with toasted bread cubes.

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

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the soaked beans, water, and beef bones or salt pork.

  2. Boil for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, cloves, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Add a few slices of lemon and hard-boiled eggs if desired.

  2. Serve with toasted bread cubes in the tureen.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 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

Black beans
Form the body of the soup and give it its dark color and earthy flavor.
Beef bones or salt pork
Add savory depth and richness to the water as it simmers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the heavy, earthy flavor of the beans.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add optional richness and a soft, creamy contrast to the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling for 3 to 4 hours. Dried beans need a long, steady simmer to soften fully and release their starch and flavor. Stopping early leaves them firm and the broth thin, so keep the pot at a gentle boil until the beans are tender.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, beef, pepper, lemon, egg, bread. 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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