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Green Turtle Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and stew

  1. Remove the entrails from the turtle and cut the coarser parts of the meat and bones.

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

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

Strain and thicken

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Add the finer parts of the turtle and the green fat, which has been simmered for 1 hour in 2 quarts of water.

  3. Thicken the soup with brown flour.

  4. Return the soup to the pot.

  5. 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. If not using eggs, add force meat balls.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and Madeira.

  5. Beat the soup well.

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

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

  4. Lemon + flourtop 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 meat and body of the soup, along with its rich, distinctive flavor.
Brown flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and sets during simmering.
Madeira
Adds aromatic depth and a rounded, wine-based flavor to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavor of the soup.
Onions
Form an aromatic base that softens and sweetens during the long stew.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with brown flour. Flour must be blended smoothly into the hot soup and simmered long enough to cook out its raw taste and thicken evenly. Adding it in lumps or too briefly leaves a pasty texture and floury flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

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