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Turtle Soup

A soup made with turtle pieces, lard, onions, garlic, parsley, thyme, pepper, tomatoes, soup meat, water, sherry, flour, lemon slices, and optional burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup base

  1. Combine turtle pieces and lard in a pot.

  2. Simmer over low heat.

  3. Uncover the pot and add onions, garlic, parsley, thyme, and pepper. Fry for a few minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add tomatoes, soup meat, and enough water to cover. Bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in sherry.

  3. Thicken with flour.

  4. Add lemon slices.

  5. Add burnt sugar if desired.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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 body of the soup.
Lard
Carries the aromatics and helps them fry and release flavor.
Onions
Build sweetness and savory depth as they soften and fry.
Flour
Thickens the broth so it becomes body-rich rather than watery.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich broth.
Burnt sugar
Deepens the color of the soup and adds a slight bittersweet note.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour. Flour must be cooked into the hot liquid, or stirred into a smooth slurry first, otherwise it clumps and leaves raw floury taste and lumps in the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, parsley, thyme, pepper, tomato, meat, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, parsley, thyme, pepper, tomato, meat, sherry. 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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