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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from green turtle meat, consommé, sherry, brandy, cayenne pepper, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Heat the green turtle in a double boiler and chop the meat into dice.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, heat the consommé, then add the turtle and its broth.

  2. Stir in the sherry, brandy, and cayenne pepper, and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Skim the surface, then mix in the arrowroot diluted in sherry.

  4. Boil for 1 minute longer and serve.

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. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sherry + arrowroottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Brandy + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 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

Green turtle
Provides the main meat and its rich flavour as the body of the soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the broth into a smooth, glossy consistency when boiled briefly.
Sherry
Adds acidity and nutty aroma that brighten the rich consommé.
Consommé
Forms the clear savoury liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing in the arrowroot. Arrowroot must be fully dispersed in cold or diluted liquid before it goes into the hot soup; added undiluted it clumps. It thickens when boiled, so the soup needs a brief boil afterward to reach full thickness and clarity.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, brandy, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, brandy, pepper. 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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