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Turtle, or Terrapin

A soup made from turtle meat, vegetables, and egg balls, seasoned with herbs and served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turtle, or Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Scald the turtle, then peel it.

  2. Soak in saltwater and boil until tender.

  3. Remove bones and finely chop the turtle.

Make the soup

  1. Add parsley, pot marjoram, shallots, onions, pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Fry out the fat meat, then add the turtle and cover with hot water.

  3. Add potatoes and cook until tender.

Add egg balls and serve

  1. For egg balls, mix milk, beaten eggs, melted lard or butter, baking powder, and enough flour to make a thick batter.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pot just before serving.

  3. Serve with sliced lemon.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the egg balls set as they cook in the soup.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the egg balls puff and lighten.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the spoonfuls hold their shape in the soup.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and softens its texture.
Potatoes
Thicken the soup slightly and add body as they cook.

The step that matters

Drop the batter in just before serving. Egg batter cooks quickly and can turn dense or stringy if it sits too long in hot liquid. Adding it at the last moment keeps the egg balls light and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, marjoram, shallot, pepper, potato, milk, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, marjoram, shallot, pepper, potato, milk, 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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