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Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, salt pork, flour, butter, spices, egg yolks, mushrooms, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Turn the turtle on its back and cut off the head to let the blood drain out. Let it rest overnight.

  2. Open the turtle on the sides, remove all the meat and eggs, and soak them in water for 24 hours.

  3. Boil the turtle meat in salted water until half cooked, then remove and let cool.

Make the soup

  1. In the broth, add the salt pork, flour, browned butter, bay leaf, cloves, onion, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg yolks, lemon juice, cayenne, black pepper, and salt.

  2. Cut the turtle meat into small squares and return it to the broth. Boil until well done.

  3. Five minutes before serving, add the mushrooms and sherry wine.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle
Provides the main meat of the soup, which becomes tender through long boiling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the broth and thicken it slightly as they cook into the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the broth, giving it body when combined with the browned butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a toasted, nutty flavor when browned first.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and depth of flavor to the broth.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a fragrant, mellow sweetness near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the turtle meat until well done after cutting it up. Turtle meat is tough and needs prolonged simmering to become tender. Cutting it into small pieces first helps heat and softening penetrate evenly, so it should be tested for tenderness before serving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, butter, clove, pepper, nutmeg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, butter, clove, pepper, nutmeg, 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.

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