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Dried Turtle Soup

A soup made from dried turtle, consommés, sherry, basil, peppercorns, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and lemon 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 ↓

Dried Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Select the thickest pieces of dried turtle and soak them in warm water for 48 hours, changing the water every 6 hours.

  2. Scald and clean the turtle, scraping the inside and trimming off jagged edges.

  3. Cut the turtle into 1‑inch squares and place in a stewpan with 1 pint of Consomme (No. 2) and a muslin bag containing basil and peppercorns.

  4. Add a little coarse sea salt and seal the stewpan tightly.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the stewpan in a bain‑marie of boiling water and simmer gently for 6 hours.

  2. Monitor the turtle pieces; remove those that are soft and continue cooking the rest until tender.

  3. Add 1 quart each of Consomme (No. 1) and Consomme (No. 3), along with ⅓ cup of sherry.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil and serve with lemon and cayenne pepper on the side.

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. Basil + lemontop 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. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 body and chewy texture of the soup after long soaking and simmering.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of acidity to the finished broth.
Consomme
Forms the clear savoury liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in the bain‑marie. Gentle heat over a long period softens dried turtle without breaking it apart; a hard boil can toughen the meat and cloud the clear consomme.

Swap the basil

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

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

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