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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, stock, herbs, onion, and green fat, thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Hang the turtle for 4-5 hours to bleed after cutting off the head.

  2. Clean and boil the turtle in enough water to cover it until the claws loosen.

  3. Remove the claws and place the turtle in cold water for 2-3 minutes, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the turtle into small pieces and add to 2½ quarts of stock with sweet herbs, sliced onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly for about 3 hours, then strain the soup.

  3. Thicken the soup with a little browned flour and simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the green fat, force-meat balls (if using), and lemon juice before serving.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle
Provides the main meat and body of the soup.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock so the soup becomes smooth and heavier in body.
Green fat
Adds richness and a rounded, mellow flavour as it melts into the hot soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Thicken with browned flour. Flour must be fully cooked and added in small amounts, then simmered, so it swells and thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, meat, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, meat, 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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