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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, herbs, onions, and spices, thickened with flour and finished with lemon juice and Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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. Remove the entrails from the turtle and cut the coarser parts of the meat and bones.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, add 4 quarts of water, the turtle parts, herbs, onions, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew slowly for 4 hours without letting it stop boiling.

  3. Simmer the green fat for 1 hour in 2 quarts of water.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Add the finer parts of the turtle and the green fat.

  6. Thicken the soup with brown flour.

  7. Return it to the pot and simmer gently for another hour.

Finish and serve

  1. If there are eggs in the turtle, boil them separately for 4 hours.

  2. Add the boiled eggs to the soup before serving.

  3. Optionally, add force meat balls to the soup.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and Madeira, mix well, and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, along with gelatinous richness from the bones.
Brown flour
Thickens the broth as its starch swells when heated, giving the soup body.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth that rounds out the rich broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the heavy, rich flavour of the soup.
Onions
Contribute savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the stew at a steady boil for 4 hours. The record calls for continuous boiling, so the soup must not stop simmering. Keeping heat steady helps the tough meat and bones break down and release gelatin and flavour into the broth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, lemon, pepper, flour, egg, meat, butter. 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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