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A Turtle Course, or Dinner

A baked turtle dish with Madeira, veal gravy, lemon, herbs, anchovies, spices, and ham essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,823 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Turtle Course, or Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turtle

  1. Cut off the turtle's head and save the blood.

  2. Remove the fins and soak them in saltwater.

  3. Cut off the bottom shell and remove the caliphee meat.

  4. Take out the heart, liver, and lights, and set them aside.

  5. Remove the bones and flesh from the back shell (the calipash).

  6. Cut the fleshy part into 2‑inch square pieces, leaving the green fat (the monsieur).

  7. Rub the fat with salt and wash it thoroughly in several waters.

Make the stew

  1. Combine the turtle pieces, Madeira, veal gravy, lemon slices, sweet herbs, cleaned anchovies, Cayenne pepper, beaten mace, mushroom powder, and essence of ham in a pot.

  2. Cover with a coarse paste and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. After baking, skim off the fat and brown the top with a salamander.

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 + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Basil + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira
Adds wine richness and depth of flavour to the stew's liquid.
Veal gravy
Provides a rich, savoury body that gives the stew its base.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savoury umami that rounds out the stew's flavour.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the stew.
Mushroom powder
Adds concentrated earthy, savoury flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy stew.

The step that matters

Covering and baking with coarse paste. The sealed paste crust traps steam and keeps the liquid from reducing too quickly, so the turtle meat cooks gently and stays moist over the long bake.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, basil, pepper, mushroom, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, basil, pepper, mushroom, ham. 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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