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Turtle Soup

A soup made from cleaned turtle meat, veal, herbs, eggs, and thickened with flour, butter, and lard, finished with Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. If the turtle is not cleaned, place it on its back, cut off its head and fins, let it bleed, then cut the belly open and remove the gall and sand bag, and wash the entrails well.

  2. Scald the turtle meat to remove the skin carefully.

  3. Cut the meat into joints like chicken.

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pot, combine the turtle meat with 5 quarts of water and boil until soft.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. In a bowl, mix the veal, parsley, thyme, black pepper, coarse sea salt, eggs, and enough flour to form forcemeat balls.

  2. Fry the forcemeat balls in a mixture of butter and lard until golden.

Finish and serve

  1. In the same pan, melt ½ pound of butter, then stir in enough flour to thicken.

  2. Add the fried forcemeat balls and the thickened butter to the soup, season with cayenne and black pepper, and adjust salt to taste.

  3. Let the soup simmer until the flour is well cooked, then stir in 1 quart of Madeira wine just before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Veal
Forms the tender, savory body of the forcemeat balls.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the soup, giving body to the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and browns the forcemeat balls in the frying fat.
Lard
Adds fat to the frying mixture, helping the forcemeat brown evenly.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma when stirred in just before serving.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour must be cooked in the butter and then simmered long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken smoothly. Adding it without cooking it well can leave lumps and a pasty, floury flavour.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, pepper, egg, flour, butter, madeira wine):

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, pepper, egg, flour, butter, madeira wine. 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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