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Dried Turtle Soup

A soup made from dried turtle, stock, vegetables, and seasonings, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Dried Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Wash and soak the turtle for four to five days.

  2. Rinse and cut the turtle into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the turtle, stock, and vegetables in a pot and simmer for four to five hours until the turtle is tender.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Thicken the soup with arrowroot mixed with sherry.

  4. Add brandy, lemon juice, cayenne, and diced turtle.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried turtle
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender after long simmering.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup into a smooth, glossy body when mixed with sherry.
Sherry
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the soup.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with arrowroot mixed with sherry. Arrowroot must be mixed into a cold liquid first so it does not clump, and it should be stirred into the simmering soup only until thickened, since prolonged boiling can thin it again.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, celery, lemon, pepper, arrowroot, sherry):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, celery, lemon, pepper, arrowroot, sherry. 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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