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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, onions, herbs, ham, butter, flour, liquor, sugar, wine, egg yolks, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cook the turtle meat, head, and shells in the liquor until done.

  2. Remove the meat.

  3. Strain the liquor.

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter and mix it with the flour.

  2. Add 1 quart of the strained liquor.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Stir in the sugar and wine.

  5. Combine the meat, thickened liquor, chopped egg yolks, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

Can the soup

  1. Place the soup in cans.

  2. Cap the cans.

  3. Tip the cans.

  4. Process the cans.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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 meat
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its substance and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and liquor into a smooth, body-giving base.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness, and its fat helps the flour mix smoothly.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich soup and balances its flavour.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the sharp lemon and wine.

The step that matters

Mixing the melted butter with the flour. Flour must be fully blended into the fat before liquid is added, otherwise it clumps. Stirring the roux smooth and then bringing it to a boil lets the starch thicken the liquor evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, butter, flour, sugar, wine, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, butter, flour, sugar, wine, egg. 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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