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Stewed Turtle

A stew made from turtle head, shell, crackers, onions, parsley, allspice, black pepper, butter, and sliced lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Cut up the turtle head and boil it with the shell on until tender.

  2. Remove the under shell and pick the meat into pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Clean the top shell and add crackers, onions, parsley, allspice, black pepper, and butter.

  2. Return the mixture to the shell, top with sliced lemon, and bake.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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 head and shell
Supplies the meat, which forms the main body of the dish.
Crackers
Absorb cooking liquid and bind the filling into a moist, spoonable mixture.
Onions
Add savory aroma and gentle sweetness as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moister, softer filling.
Sliced lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat.

The step that matters

Boil the turtle until tender. Turtle meat is tough and full of connective tissue. Simmering slowly for long enough lets that tissue break down into tender meat. Stopping early leaves the meat chewy and hard to pick apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, allspice, pepper, butter, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, allspice, pepper, butter, lemon. 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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