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Green Turtle and Terrapin

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 and Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dip turtle steaks in melted butter seasoned with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Broil the steaks on a double-wire gridiron for about 7 minutes on each side over moderate heat.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with currant jelly.

  4. If the turtle is tough, roll steaks in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, brown in butter, then cover with broth or boiling water and stew until tender.

  5. Add Madeira and lemon juice to the turtle and gravy, then serve hot.

  6. For fried turtle, bread and fry the steaks in butter, then keep warm on brown paper.

  7. In the pan, combine cream and tomato ketchup, boil while preparing the dish.

  8. Serve with sliced lemon and sauce in a bowl.

  9. For tartar sauce, mix grated onion, chopped parsley, capers, and pickles into mayonnaise.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, flour, madeira wine, lemon, cream, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, madeira wine, lemon, cream, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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