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Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, water, lemon, potato, onion, tomatoes, bay leaves, parsley, flour, butter, egg, lemon slices, Worcestershire sauce, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put the meat in a pot with water and boil.

  2. Add the lemon, potato, onion, tomatoes, bay leaves, and parsley.

  3. Boil all together for 3 hours.

  4. Brown the flour in a pan, adding a little of the soup and butter.

  5. Add the browned flour mixture to the pot and boil slowly for 2 hours.

Season and serve

  1. In a tureen, place the chopped hard boiled egg, lemon slices, and chopped parsley.

  2. Season the soup with Worcestershire sauce and coarse sea salt, then strain into the tureen.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the soup and gives it a richer, nutty flavour.
Butter
Fat that is used to brown the flour, adding richness and flavour to the thickening.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savoury depth to the broth as they simmer.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the soup.
Potato
Breaks down during long simmering, adding body and mild starch to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked until it smells nutty and turns light brown before it goes into the pot. Undercooked flour tastes raw and pasty, and it will not thicken the soup as smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, potato, onion, tomato, parsley, flour, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, onion, tomato, parsley, flour, butter. 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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