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Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, organs, and vegetables, seasoned with mace, nutmeg, cloves, and white pepper, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Cut off the turtle's head and hang it to bleed.

  2. Remove the scales and cut it open, taking out all the meat.

  3. Soak the white meat in salt and water.

  4. Cut off the fins and keep them separate with the gut.

Make the soup

  1. Put all the refuse meat into a soup pot with sufficient water, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, onions, and sweet herbs.

  2. Season with mace, nutmeg, cloves, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Boil gently for three hours.

  4. Cut up the gut. Wash the gut. Simmer until tender.

  5. Cut into narrow stripes.

  6. Stew the white meat with the lungs and heart.

  7. Cut into small square pieces. Reserve some pieces for cutlets.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the meat to the strained soup.

  2. Add the green fat of the turtle.

  3. Thicken with arrowroot.

  4. Stir in the wine.

  5. Add the forcemeat and egg balls.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle
Forms the main meat of the soup, providing body and rich flavour.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup into a smooth, glossy body as it heats.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich broth.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and depth as they simmer in the broth.

The step that matters

Thicken with arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens best when stirred into liquid that is hot but not boiling and then kept from over-boiling. Boiling for too long can thin the starch's grip, leaving the soup watery or cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, onion, basil, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, onion, basil, nutmeg. 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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