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Turtle-bean Soup

A hearty soup made with turtle beans, salt pork, lean beef, carrots, onions, and spices, finished with eggs, lemon, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash and soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  2. In the morning, place the beans in a pot with 3 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil, adding more water as it evaporates.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the salt pork, lean beef, carrot, onions, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Cover and boil for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup through a colander into a tureen.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sliced hard-boiled eggs, lemon slices, and wine to the tureen.

  2. Optionally, serve with small sausages boiled for 10 minutes, skinned, and added whole or cut into pieces.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

What each ingredient does

Black or turtle beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they cook down.
Lean beef
Adds savory meat flavor and richness to the broth during the long simmer.
Salt pork
Contributes fat and savory depth to the broth as it cooks.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, earthy broth.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Keep the beans covered with water while boiling. Adding water as it evaporates keeps the beans submerged so they cook evenly and soften fully. Beans left exposed can turn unevenly tender and the broth can become too concentrated over a long boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, beef, carrot, onion, pepper, egg. 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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