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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, simmered with spices and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Soak the calf's head pieces in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the water, add 4 quarts of cold water and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook slowly until the meat slips from the bones.

  2. Remove the meat but leave the bones in the pot.

  3. Add cloves, peppercorns, allspice, onions, carrots, turnip, celery roots, herbs, and cinnamon.

  4. Simmer for 2 hours, then strain and let cool.

  5. Before serving, remove the fat.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the meat and bones that give the soup its body and rich flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth to the broth as they simmer.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and aroma to the simmering stock.
Celery roots
Add a mild, earthy celery aroma to the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery, cinnamon):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery, cinnamon. 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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