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Soup

Turtle Soup From Beans

A bean-based soup flavored with thyme, savory, parsley, butter, and finished with egg yolks, meatballs, lemon, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turtle Soup From Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the black beans overnight.

  2. Boil the beans in 1 gallon of water until tender.

  3. Strain the beans through a colander, returning the pressed beans to the pot.

Season and finish

  1. Tie thyme, summer savory, and parsley in a thin cloth and add to the pot.

  2. Add cold butter, salt, and pepper to the mixture.

  3. Just before serving, add the quartered egg yolks, force meat balls, sliced lemon, and white 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 + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Summer savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Beans + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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
Form the thick body of the soup as they soften and break down when pressed.
Cold butter
Adds richness and a silky finish to the soup when stirred in.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brightens the rich, earthy soup.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add a creamy, mellow texture and richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cold butter. Butter stirred into hot soup emulsifies into a smooth, glossy body. Adding it too early, or to a boiling pot, can separate and leave the fat greasy.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, summer savory, parsley, butter, pepper, egg, meat):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, summer savory, parsley, butter, pepper, egg, meat. 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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