Skip to main content
Main

Green Turtle and Terrapin

A soup made with turtle flesh, eggs, ham, vegetables, herbs, and quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Turtle and Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Brown the onions in butter in a colander.

  2. Add the raw ham, carrots, turnips, celery, cloves, allspice, peppercorns, mace, and herbs.

  3. Add beef or veal bones if desired for stock.

  4. Mix the egg white and shell with cold water.

  5. Boil the mixture with stock until clear.

Finish the soup

  1. Add lemon juice.

  2. Add Madeira.

  3. Add turtle eggs.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Brown butter.

  6. Add flour.

  7. Gradually stir in stock.

  8. Season with salt and cayenne.

  9. Add eggs.

  10. Add green fat.

  11. Add lemon.

  12. Add wine.

  13. Incorporate turtle flesh.

Make and add the quenelles

  1. Make quenelles from turtle or chicken meat, hard-boiled egg yolks, raw egg yolks, and flour to form balls.

  2. Incorporate the quenelles.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 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

Onions
Browned in butter to build a sweet, deep savoury base for the soup.
Butter
Carries browning flavour and enriches the soup with fat and richness.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bound body when cooked with butter.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the quenelle mixture so the balls hold their shape when cooked.
Egg white and shell
Clarify the stock by trapping fine particles as it boils until clear.
Madeira
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture with stock until clear. Egg white and shell must coagulate slowly so they trap cloudy particles; boiling too hard breaks up the raft and leaves the stock cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, allspice):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, allspice. 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.

More turtle soup recipes

Mock 441Green 33Clear 6 See all 139 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes