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Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, fins, shell, bacon, onions, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Kill the turtle at night in winter or in the morning in summer, hang it by the hind fins, cut off the head, and let it bleed well.

  2. Separate the bottom shell from the top shell.

  3. Put the liver and entrails in separate bowls of water.

  4. Cut the flesh from the bottom shell and place it in water.

  5. Break the bottom shell in two, wash it clean, and place it in a pot.

  6. Cover with water and add the bacon and chopped onions.

  7. Boil steadily for three hours, adding water if necessary.

  8. Wash the top shell and set it aside.

  9. Par-boil the fins, clean them, and cut them in half.

  10. Sprinkle salt over the fins and flesh from the shells and cover them.

Make the soup

  1. After boiling, remove the bacon, scrape the shell clean, and strain the broth.

  2. Reserve one-third of the broth in the pot and set the rest aside for the soup.

  3. Add the nice bits of turtle meat and the fins to the broth.

  4. Fill the upper shell with the mixture.

  5. Season with wine, cayenne pepper, mushroom catsup, lemon pickle, mace, nutmeg, and cloves.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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 body of the soup, along with gelatin-rich flesh from the shells.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat to the broth as it simmers, deepening its flavour.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the broth during the long boil.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savoury depth and umami to the finished soup.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic richness that rounds out the seasoned soup.

The step that matters

Boiling steadily for three hours. A steady simmer, not a hard boil, slowly extracts flavour and gelatin from the bones and shell while keeping the meat tender. Adding water as needed keeps the pot from running dry and the broth from concentrating too much.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, lemon, mace, nutmeg, clove, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, lemon, mace, nutmeg, clove, wine. 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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