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Green Turtle Soup

A soup made from turtle meat, herbs, and eggs, simmered with Madeira and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Green Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Chop the coarser parts of the turtle meat, entrails, and bones.

  2. Add 4 quarts of water, herbs, onions, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew for 4 hours without letting it cease to boil.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Add the finer parts of the turtle and green fat simmered in 2 quarts of water.

  6. Simmer for 1 hour.

  7. Thicken with browned flour.

  8. Simmer gently for 1 hour longer.

Prepare the eggs

  1. If there are eggs in the turtle, boil them separately for 4 hours.

  2. Mash the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs with 2 teaspoons of butter.

  3. Bind the mixture with 1 raw beaten egg.

  4. Shape into pellets.

  5. Boil the pellets for 2 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiled eggs to the soup before serving.

  2. If there are no eggs, add force-meat balls.

  3. Add the boiled mock eggs to the soup.

  4. Add lemon juice and Madeira.

  5. Mix well.

  6. Serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle meat
Provides the main body of the soup and its rich, meaty flavour as it stews.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty depth of colour and flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks are mashed into the mock-egg mixture, giving it body and a rich, creamy texture.
Raw egg
Binds the mashed yolk and butter so the pellets hold their shape when boiled.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth that rounds out the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the stew at a gentle boil for the full 4 hours. Long, steady simmering breaks down connective tissue in the turtle so the meat becomes tender and the broth gains body. Letting it stop boiling can stall this and leave the meat tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, flour, meat, egg, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, flour, meat, egg, butter. 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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