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Clear Turtle Soup

A clear soup made with turtle, beef, veal, vegetables, herbs, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Clear Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the turtle for 3 days, changing the water frequently.

  2. Combine the stock, turtle, and salt in a large stewpan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Add the prepared vegetables, herbs, and bag of peppercorns.

  5. Remove scum as it rises.

  6. Cover and cook gently for 8 to 9 hours, adding more stock if it reduces too much.

  7. Strain the soup and set aside the turtle pieces.

  8. Remove fat when cold.

Clarify and finish

  1. Pass the beef and veal through a meat grinder 2 or 3 times.

  2. Add the ground meat, egg whites, and shells to the soup.

  3. Whisk until it boils.

  4. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup again.

  6. Return the soup to the stewpan with the turtle and turtle fat cut into small squares.

  7. Add sherry, lemon juice, and seasoning.

  8. Cook gently for a few minutes.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites and shells
Bind the meat and float up to clarify the stock, leaving it clear.
Lean beef and veal
Add meaty flavour to the stock and, once ground, help trap solids during clarifying.
Sun-dried turtle
Provides the main flavour and the tender pieces returned to the finished soup.
Stock
Forms the body of the soup, so it should be good quality.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Clarifying with egg whites. Whisk until the mixture just boils, then simmer gently. Boiling hard or stirring after the egg whites set breaks up the raft, leaving the soup cloudy instead of clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, egg, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, egg, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley. 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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