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Turtle Soup

A stew of turtle meat, herbs, onions, pepper, salt, lemon juice, Madeira, eggs, entrails, and green fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the turtle according to Mrs. Rundell's directions.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the coarse portions with seasoning herbs, onions, pepper, and salt for 6 hours.

  2. If there are any eggs, add them to the soup and stew for 4 hours.

  3. Strain and thicken the soup.

  4. Cut the entrails, fine parts, and green fat into small pieces and add to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Warm the juice of ½ lemon and ⅔ cup Madeira in the soup before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Turtle
Provides the main meat and body of the soup, with its fat adding richness.
Eggs
Set during long stewing, adding body and thickening to the soup.
Madeira
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth when warmed into the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stew the coarse portions for 6 hours. Long, gentle stewing is needed to break down the tough connective tissue of the turtle, so the meat becomes tender and the broth gains body. Too hot a simmer can toughen the meat and cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, lemon. 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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