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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from green turtle, water, herbs, vegetables, and butter, finished with lemon slices, egg or forcemeat balls, and reserved fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the green fat from the turtle and cut it into dice; set aside.

  2. In a pot, combine the turtle with 1 quart of water, peppercorns, cloves, parsley, summer savory, sweet marjoram, thyme, bay leaves, and sage tied together.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and sauté the onion, carrot, turnip, and celery for 15 minutes without burning.

  2. Add the sautéed vegetables to the soup pot.

  3. In the same pan, add 2 tablespoons of dry flour to the remaining butter and cook until brown; stir this into the soup.

  4. Season the soup with salt and pepper, then let it simmer gently for 1 hour.

  5. Strain the soup and skim off all the fat.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup with thin slices of lemon, egg or forcemeat balls, and the reserved green fat.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Summer savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

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

  3. Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Summer savory + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Summer savory + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

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 and body of the soup, flavouring the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Carries the sautéed vegetables and forms the base for the flour roux that thickens the soup.
Dry flour
Cooked in butter to form a roux, which thickens the soup and adds a toasty flavour.
Onion
Softened and browned in butter, it adds sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in butter. Flour must be cooked until it turns brown without scorching; undercooked flour tastes raw and pasty, while burnt flour turns bitter and dark.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, parsley, summer savory, marjoram, thyme, sage, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, parsley, summer savory, marjoram, thyme, sage, carrot. 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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