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Turtle Roasted

A roasted turtle served with a sauce made from sturgeon-style sauce and turtle soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turtle Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Place the turtle meat in a stewpan with cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat if the meat is sufficiently set.

  3. Skewer the turtle on a lark spit and coat it with egg.

  4. Cover with bread crumbs.

  5. Repeat the egg and bread crumb coating two more times.

  6. Drizzle a little clarified butter over the turtle.

Roast and serve

  1. Secure the spit to the roasting spit.

  2. Roast for about 30 minutes.

  3. Prepare the sauce as you would for sturgeon.

  4. Add a little turtle soup after straining it through a tammy.

  5. Serve the sauce on the dish.

  6. Place the roasted turtle on top.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 dish, set by gentle simmering before coating and roasting.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the meat so the coating holds during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when roasted over the egg layer.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the crust.
Turtle soup
Adds concentrated savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat if the meat is sufficiently set. Overcooking the meat in the water toughens its proteins and dries it out before roasting, so it should be only just set when removed.

“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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