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Thick and Clear Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle stock, beef, eggs, sherry, herbs, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Thick and Clear Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Boil the turtle stock for about three hours and strain it.

  2. Divide the stock into two parts: two-thirds for clear soup and one-third for thick soup.

Prepare the beef and eggs

  1. Cut the gravy beef into one-inch pieces.

  2. Pass the pieces through a sausage machine twice.

  3. In a two-quart pan, combine the ground beef with 1 pint of water and stir well with a whisk.

  4. Crack the eggs one at a time, checking for freshness.

  5. Beat the cracked eggs in a separate pan.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the beaten eggs with the beef mixture and add the best turtle stock and ½ pint of sherry.

  2. Trim, wash, and prepare the mushrooms for cooking.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Provides the meaty body and flavour that the soup is built on.
Eggs
Bind the beef mixture and help clarify the soup as they set.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the beaten eggs with the beef mixture. Eggs must be combined evenly with the beef so they can coagulate and bind the mixture. Adding them unevenly or too hot can cause lumps and a cloudy, grainy soup.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, sherry, marjoram, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, sherry, marjoram, thyme, mushroom. 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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