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Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, ham hock, herbs, lemon, wine, and topped with fried turtle meat cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Kill and clean the turtle, then soak it in cold water.

  2. Wash and scrape the shell.

  3. If using a loggerhead, it will yield one gallon of soup; if using a sea-turtle, use eight pounds.

  4. Place the turtle in a soup kettle with 2 gallons of water and the hock of ham at 8 AM if serving at 3 PM.

  5. Boil briskly.

  6. Once the shell is hot, remove it, scrape out the meat, and return the meat to the kettle.

Make the soup

  1. Add the bag of thyme and sweet marjoram, along with salt, pepper, and allspice.

  2. Add the juice of one lemon and remove the hock.

  3. Mix brown flour with some soup to thicken.

  4. Boil while stirring.

  5. Remove the bag of herbs.

  6. Pour the soup into a tureen, adding the sherry or Madeira wine.

  7. Slice a lemon and add it along with the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Chop some turtle meat.

  2. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

  3. Mix the meat with bread crumbs.

  4. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  5. Fry the cakes in butter.

  6. Place the fried cakes on top of the soup.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle
Provides the main meat and the rich, gelatinous body of the soup.
Hock of ham
Adds savory, smoky depth to the broth as it simmers.
Brown flour (in the method)
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when mixed with liquid and boiled.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and aroma to the finished soup.
Eggs
Hard-boiled yolks add richness and body; beaten eggs bind the meat cakes.
Bread crumbs
Bind the chopped meat into cakes and help them hold their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Boil while stirring after adding the flour. Flour mixed with liquid can clump if added without stirring. Stirring while it boils disperses the starch so it thickens the soup evenly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pepper, thyme, marjoram, lemon, sherry, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, thyme, marjoram, lemon, sherry, 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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