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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, bones, herbs, onions, and green fat, thickened with flour and finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Remove the entrails from the turtle.

  2. Cut up the coarser parts of the meat and bones.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, add 4 quarts of water, the turtle parts, herbs, onions, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew very slowly for 4 hours, ensuring it continues to boil.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Add the finer parts of the turtle and the green fat, which has been simmered for 1 hour in 2 quarts of water.

  5. Thicken the soup with brown flour.

  6. Return the soup to the pot.

  7. Simmer gently for another hour.

Finish and serve

  1. If there are eggs in the turtle, boil them separately for 4 hours.

  2. If there are eggs in the turtle, add them to the soup before serving. If no eggs are present, add forcemeat balls instead.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and mix well.

  4. 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Turtle
Provides the main meat and bones that give the soup its body and rich flavour.
Green fat
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the broth.
Brown flour
Thickens the strained soup, giving it body as its starch swells in the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy broth.

The step that matters

Keep the stew at a gentle, steady boil for 4 hours. Slow, continuous simmering breaks down the tough turtle meat and bones and extracts flavour into the broth. Letting it stop boiling or rushing with high heat leaves the meat tough and the broth weak.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, flour, egg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, flour, egg. 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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