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Stewed Turtle

A dish of turtle meat cooked with crackers, onion, parsley, allspice, black pepper, butter, wine, and lemon, baked in its shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turtle

  1. Cut up the turtle head and boil it in the shell until tender.

  2. Remove the under shell.

  3. Pick the meat into pieces.

  4. Clean the top shell thoroughly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add crushed crackers, chopped onion, parsley, allspice, black pepper, and butter to the turtle meat.

  2. Return the mixture to the top shell.

  3. Top with sliced lemon.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle meat
Provides the main protein and the body of the filling.
Crackers
Absorb liquid and bind the filling so it holds together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the filling moist.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, allspice, pepper, butter, white wine, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, allspice, pepper, butter, white wine, lemon. 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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