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Turtle Steak Deviled

A turtle steak coated with orange juice, corn powder, mustard, and a savory sauce of mushroom catsup, currant jelly, port wine, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 937 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Turtle Steak Deviled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Mix orange juice, corn powder, and mustard.

  2. Spread mixture over the turtle steak.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the steak in a chafing dish for 5 minutes on each side.

  2. Melt butter in the chafing dish.

  3. Add mushroom catsup, currant jelly, port wine, cayenne, and salt.

  4. Simmer the steak until tender.

  5. Add lime juice.

  6. Serve.

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. Orange + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Corn + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together773 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mustard + limetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Orange juice
Provides acidity and flavour that brightens the rich sauce.
Corn powder
Thickens the sauce and helps it cling to the steak.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and the steak.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the acidity of the lime and juice.
Port wine
Adds depth and sweetness to the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer the steak until tender. Tough cuts of turtle need long, gentle simmering in liquid so collagen breaks down into gelatin. Rushing the simmer or letting the sauce boil hard can leave the meat chewy and dry out the surface.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, corn, mustard, butter, mushroom, port wine, lime):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, corn, mustard, butter, mushroom, port wine, lime. 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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