Name: Turtle Bean Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint black beans, soaked overnight; 1 quart water; ½ pound salt pork; ½ pound beef; 1 onion, chopped; 1 grated carrot; a little wine; 1 lemon, juiced; 1 hard boiled egg, sliced

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Turtle Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the black beans in cold water overnight.
In a pot, combine the soaked beans, water, salt pork, beef, onion, and grated carrot.
Boil for three to four hours, then strain the mixture.
In a tureen, add a little wine, lemon juice, and sliced hard boiled egg.
Pour the strained soup over the ingredients 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.

Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,443 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, beef, onion, carrot, wine, egg):

Avocadofits better
Cherryfits about as well
Plumfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, beef, onion, carrot, wine, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.