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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from green turtle meat, vegetables, herbs, and seasonings, finished with butter, flour, and served with lemon slices and egg or forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Separate the green fat from the turtle and cut the turtle into dice; set aside.

  2. In a pot, combine the turtle with 1 quart of water, peppercorns, cloves, parsley, summer savory, sweet marjoram, thyme, bay leaves, and sage tied together.

  3. In a pan, sauté the onion, carrot, turnip, and celery in butter for 15 minutes without burning.

  4. Add the sautéed vegetables to the soup pot.

Thicken and simmer

  1. In the same pan, add dry flour to the remaining butter and cook until brown; stir into the soup.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then let simmer gently for 1 hour.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup, skim off the fat, and serve with lemon slices, egg or forcemeat balls, and the green fat.

  2. For a thicker soup, add 1 tablespoon of butter and use 3 tablespoons of flour instead of 2.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Summer savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

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

  3. Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Summer savory + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Summer savory + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 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

Green turtle
Provides the main meat and body of the soup.
Butter
Carries flavor from the sautéed vegetables and enriches the soup with fat.
Dry flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, and browning adds a nutty taste.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until brown and stirring it into the soup. Flour must be cooked in fat so it loses its raw taste, and it should be mixed in smoothly so it does not clump. Its starch then thickens the liquid as the soup simmers.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, parsley, summer savory, marjoram, thyme, sage, carrot):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, parsley, summer savory, marjoram, thyme, sage, carrot. 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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