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Soup

Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, bone, onions, herbs, lemon juice, and thickened with brown flour and green fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,404 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut up the turtle, including meat and bone.

  2. Add the water and herbs, then stew for 4 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture, thicken with brown flour, and add the green fat.

  4. Simmer gently for 1 hour longer.

Finish and serve

  1. If there are eggs in the turtle, boil them separately for 4 hours and add to the soup before serving.

  2. If not, add forcemeat balls and then the lemon juice.

  3. Serve at once.

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. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 bone that flavour the stock and body of the soup.
Brown flour
Thickens the strained liquid so the soup has a fuller, heavier body.
Green fat
Adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with brown flour. Flour must be stirred in smoothly to the strained liquid before it is simmered; if added to hot liquid without mixing, it clumps and leaves the soup lumpy and uneven in texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, flour. 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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