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Turtle Soup, Clear

A clear soup made with beef, veal, ham, turtle, vegetables, herbs, and spices, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Turtle Soup, Clear

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine beef, veal, and ham in a pan.

  2. Cover the mixture with cold water.

  3. Add turnip, carrot, celery, onion, basil, mushrooms, pennyroyal, thyme, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Simmer slowly for 6 hours, skimming constantly.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Let the strained broth cool.

  7. Remove all fat from the cooled broth.

Prepare the turtle

  1. Soak dried turtle in warm water for 12 hours.

  2. Drain the soaked turtle.

  3. Cover the turtle with warm water.

  4. Let the turtle sit for 12 hours in a cool oven with the door open.

  5. If the turtle has an unpleasant smell, rub it with lemon juice and salt.

  6. Wash the turtle thoroughly.

  7. Cook the turtle slowly for 12 hours until tender.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Veal
Adds gelatin and a mild, rich body to the broth during slow simmering.
Dried turtle
Supplies the main ingredient, which softens over long soaking and slow cooking.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth while it simmers. Fat and impurities rise to the surface during the long simmer. Skimming them constantly keeps the broth clear and free of greasy, off flavors.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, ham, turnip, carrot, celery, onion. 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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