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Turtle Steaks

Turtle steaks are marinated in oil, butter, lemon juice, pepper, and sea salt, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the turtle veal slices with oil or butter, lemon juice, pepper, and a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the slices marinate for at least 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Broil the slices thoroughly, similar to cooking steak.

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

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green turtle veal
Lean meat that becomes tender and juicy when marinated and then broiled quickly.
Lemon juice
Acid that helps tenderise the meat and adds a bright flavour during marinating.
Oil or butter
Fat that carries seasoning across the surface and helps the meat brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Broil the slices thoroughly, similar to cooking steak. Broiling is fast and intense, so the slices can scorch outside before the centre cooks. Watching heat and timing helps the surface brown while the inside reaches the intended doneness.

“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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