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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made with shin beef, turtle pieces, vegetables, and a roux, seasoned with cayenne pepper and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Soak the turtle overnight to drain off blood.

  2. Cook the neck and flippers in boiling water for 1 minute to scrape off the scales.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine shin beef, carrots, onion, whole peppers, cloves, thyme, leeks, celery, and parsley with enough water to cover.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Add the turtle pieces to the pot, reserving the liquid.

  4. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  5. Add the roux to the soup to thicken it.

  6. Simmer the soup until it loses its strong smell.

  7. Add the cut turtle and shin beef back into the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with cayenne pepper and stir in the sherry.

  2. Serve immediately after adding the sherry.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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

Shin beef
Provides meaty body and rich flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Turtle
Supplies the main meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and texture.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the soup and gives it body.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to finish the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the strong smell fades. Simmering lets volatile compounds from the meat and broth escape, so the soup tastes clean rather than strong. Stopping early leaves an off, gamey aroma that the sherry cannot fully mask.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, pepper, clove, thyme, leek, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, pepper, clove, thyme, leek, celery. 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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