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Potage Tortue a LA Rouennaise

A turbot soup from Rouen with scalloped fillets, Spanish sauce, and various seafood and game additions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Slice the filets of turbot into scallops.

  2. In a stew pot, combine the trimmings and bones of the turbot with the onions, leeks, lean ham, parsley, garlic, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, bay leaf, thyme, basil, and marjoram.

  3. Add ½ bottle of champagne and simmer for one hour.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the strained liquid to a slightly thickened Spanish sauce and clarify it.

  2. Pour the sauce into a soup tureen containing the scallops of turbot cooked in boiling salted water, a serving of red partridge quenelles, cock kidneys, shrimp tails, blanched oysters, and small mushrooms.

  3. Serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Onion + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together9,294 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Its bones and trimmings build the flavour of the stock, and the scallops provide the delicate fish in the soup.
Champagne
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the stock as it simmers and reduces slightly.
Onions
Their natural sugars caramelise gently during simmering, adding sweetness and depth to the stock.
Leeks
Contribute a mild, sweet savoury base to the stock.
Spanish sauce
Gives the soup body and a thickened, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Clarifying the sauce. Clarifying removes cloudy particles so the soup stays clear. If the sauce is boiled hard or stirred roughly during clarifying, the clearing agent can break up and the broth turns murky.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, onion, leek, ham, parsley, garlic, pepper):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, onion, leek, ham, parsley, garlic, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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