Name: Fricasseed Turtle
Ingredients: 2 pounds turtle, cut into squares; chicken or veal broth; 1 onion, minced; 1 can mushrooms; parsley, for garnish; allspice, to taste; lemon juice from 1 lemon; toast, for serving; red beets, for garnish

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 ↓

Fricasseed Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Boil chicken or veal broth with the minced onion.
Add the turtle squares and cook until done.
Stir in the can of mushrooms and season to taste.
Sprinkle with parsley and flavor with allspice.
Thicken the mixture and serve it on toast.
Garnish with red beets and add lemon juice 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,289 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,083 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle: Provides the main protein and meaty bulk of the fricassee.
Chicken or veal broth: Forms the cooking liquid that carries the flavor of the whole dish.
Mushrooms: Add savory, earthy flavor and soft texture to the sauce.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the broth.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, parsley, allspice, 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.