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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from green turtle meat simmered with stock, butter, ham, veal bone, vegetables, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Cut the turtle meat into dice-sized pieces.

  2. Simmer with a little stock for 10 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and add sliced vegetables, ham, and veal bone.

  2. Brown the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Mix in the flour after browning.

  4. Pour in the boiling stock and add celery, tomatoes, whole peppers, and allspice.

  5. Boil for 3 hours, adding stock as needed to maintain the desired amount of soup.

  6. Strain the soup.

  7. Season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the sherry, madeira, lemon juice, and the turtle meat before serving.

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. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Celery + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Green turtle
Provides the main meat, which is cut into pieces and added to the finished soup.
Butter
Melted fat that starts the browning of the vegetables, ham, and veal bone for flavour.
Flour
Stirred in after browning to thicken the soup as it cooks.
Sherry
Adds aromatic, slightly sweet and acidic notes stirred in at the end.
Madeira
Adds rich, nutty sweetness stirred in at the end.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, long-cooked soup.

The step that matters

Brown the mixture thoroughly. Browning the vegetables, ham, and veal bone develops deep roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale browning leaves the finished soup flat and lacking depth.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, veal, flour, celery, tomato, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, veal, flour, celery, tomato, pepper. 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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