Skip to main content
Main

Turtle Soup

A soup made with turtle meat, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, rice, eggs, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Boil the turtle until tender, then separate the meat from the bones and chop it finely.

  2. Strain the broth in which the turtle was cooked.

Make the soup

  1. Add the diced potatoes, can of tomatoes, corn, and rice to the broth.

  2. Season with red pepper, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Cream together the butter and flour.

  4. Add the mixture slowly to the broth.

  5. Chop the hard boiled eggs finely.

  6. Add the eggs to the soup.

  7. Add the corn and parsley just 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

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

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle
Supplies the meat that forms the main body of the soup.
Flour
Creamed with butter and stirred in to thicken the broth.
Butter
Creamed with flour to form a mixture that helps thicken the broth.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add body and starch to the broth.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens, adding body to the soup.
Hard boiled eggs
Chopped finely and added to the soup for richness and texture.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be creamed smoothly with butter and added slowly to hot broth. Adding it all at once, or without stirring, can form lumps instead of an even, thickened soup.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, corn, rice, parsley, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, corn, rice, parsley, pepper, butter, flour. 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.

More turtle soup recipes

Mock 441Green 33Clear 6 See all 139 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes