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Turtle Soup

Soup made from turtle meat, wine, lemon juice, catsup, and salt, finished with egg and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil turtle meat with water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Add turtle meat back to the stock with wine, lemon juice, catsup, and salt.

  2. Boil until the meat is tender.

  3. Add egg balls and forcemeat balls 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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  4. Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,817 recipes

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

  5. Meat + winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together754 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Lemon and egg 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 meat
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its meaty flavor as it simmers.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the broth.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich broth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Grapefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, wine, egg. 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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