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Canned-turtle Soup

A soup made with canned turtle, stock, curry, herbs, and egg yolk balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,823 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Canned-turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the canned turtle with the stock to thin the jelly.

  2. Add curry powder, green onions, basil, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil.

Add the egg balls and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of hard-boiled eggs with the raw egg until smooth, then roll into small balls.

  2. Add the turtle and the egg balls.

  3. Cook for a few minutes until heated through and serve hot.

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. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg
Binds the mashed hard-boiled yolks so they hold together as small balls.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the egg balls.
Fish or vegetable stock
Provides the liquid base that thins the canned turtle jelly into a soup.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, basil, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, basil, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, egg. 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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