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Delicious Turtle Soup

Soup of turtle meat, eggs, and seasonings, thickened with browned flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Delicious Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Scald and scrape the outer skin off the turtle shell.

  2. Carefully open the turtle without breaking the gall.

  3. Break both shells into pieces and place them in a pot.

Make the soup

  1. Add the fins, eggs, and some delicate parts to the pot with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Add onions, parsley, thyme, salt, pepper, cloves, and allspice to taste.

  3. Rub the reserved parts in browned flour and fry them in butter.

  4. Add the fried parts and eggs to the soup.

  5. Thicken the soup with browned flour and butter mixed together.

  6. Serve very hot.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 body of the soup.
Eggs (in the method)
Add richness and body to the soup when cooked in it.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Carries flavour in frying and enriches the thickened soup with fat.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with browned flour and butter mixed together. Flour must be cooked enough to gelatinise and thicken without lumping. Adding it as a smooth mixture with butter helps it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly rather than clumping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, pepper, clove, allspice, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, pepper, clove, allspice, flour, butter. 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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