Skip to main content
Main

Gravy for a Turtle

A savory gravy made from veal, beef, spices, suet, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gravy for a Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Kill the turtle the night before and let it bleed for 2–3 hours.

  2. Remove the head, fins, and callipash, and place the insides in cold water.

  3. Clean the guts and tripe thoroughly in scalding water, then soak them in fresh water overnight.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the shoulders and bones with the fins in 1 quart of water, adding mace, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt; simmer for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the broth and set the fins aside for later use.

Assemble the gravy

  1. Chop the meat from the shoulders finely, mix with suet, and season with mace, nutmeg, sweet marjoram, parsley, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Stuff the mixture under the meat and cover it to prevent burning.

  3. Cut the remaining meat and fins into egg‑sized pieces, season, and place them in the callipash.

  4. Secure the callipash to keep the gravy inside, then boil the gravy and add more as needed.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle (in the method)
Provides the meat, fins and gelatinous body that form the body of the gravy.
Veal
Adds meaty body and rich flavour to the broth and stuffing.
Beef or veal suet
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and gives it a moist, rounded texture.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Boiling the shoulders and bones for 3 hours. A long, gentle simmer is needed to draw collagen and flavour from bone and connective tissue into the broth. Boiling too hard can cloud the liquid and toughen the meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, nutmeg, pepper, madeira wine, marjoram, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, nutmeg, pepper, madeira wine, marjoram, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes