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Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, stock, onions, spices, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the turtle by cutting the calipee (white meat) and removing the entrails carefully.

  2. Dismember the fins and cut the calipash (dark meat) from the back shell in large pieces.

  3. Soak the green fat in ice water and saw the shell into pieces for boiling.

Make the stock

  1. In a kettle, place the shell and head, pour cold stock over, and boil gently, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add one onion, spices, black pepper, thyme, savory, and lemon peel to the kettle.

  3. At 2 PM, prepare three stew pans for the green fat, calipee, and calipash, covering each with turtle stock.

Cook the parts

  1. Cook the green fat for 30 minutes, the calipee for 2.5 hours, and adjust cooking times for other parts as needed.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the soup by gelatinizing with liquid as it heats, giving body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and rounds the soup's texture.
Onions
Build a savory aromatic base as they soften and release sugars during simmering.
Raw ham
Contributes salty, savory meat flavor to the stock.
Madeira wine
Adds sweet, nutty aroma and some acidity to the finished soup.
Lemons
Adds bright acidity that lifts the rich flavors of the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming off scum while boiling gently. Skimming keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting, because coagulated proteins and fat rise to the surface and would otherwise cloud the broth and add off flavors.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, clove, mace, flour, butter, ham, madeira wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, clove, mace, flour, butter, ham, madeira wine. 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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