That was eons ago, before most people were concerned about the possible evils of corn-syrup-spiked peanut butter. To make the soup, they used gobs of it. We sucked it down as if it were a steaming peanut-butter shake, oddly tasty but slightly unsettling. Then they never made it again.

My hope was that tahini, an unsweetened sesame seed butter, would give me a soup as voluptuous as that peanut butter endeavor, without being cloying  especially if I added enough garlic, coriander and lemon, for an assertive, hummus-like edge, and carrots, for a delicate sweetness.

Tahini is not forcefully emulsified like most popular peanut butters, and I did worry that it would break when heated, leaving me with an oil-slicked mess. What I needed was reassurance, preferably in the form of a trustworthy tahini soup recipe on which I could base mine. I figured that one of my authoritative Middle Eastern cookbooks would surely have something, but not so.

Then I searched online for “tahini soup,” and a whole universe of possibilities opened up  most of them vegan (a cuisine far more exotic to me than either Middle Eastern or African). This made sense. Nut and seed butters add a creamy albeit dairy-less body to soups. And separating tahini didn’t seem to be an issue.

So, I made a simple carrot soup with loads of garlic and lemon for punch, and then puréed in some tahini at the end.