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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf and pig heads, with meat, forcemeat balls, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heads

  1. Parboil the calf's head and pig's head in separate large saucepans filled with water, skimming the water constantly while boiling.

  2. Remove the heads, cut the meat into oblong squares about 1¼ inches long, and slice the tongues.

Make the liquor

  1. Add the bones to the liquor from the calf's head, along with sweet herbs, lemon juice, lemon peel, cloves, mushroom powder, and chopped shallot.

  2. Simmer the mixture slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the liquor through a sieve and let it cool to remove fat and scum. The liquor should be jelly‑like but not too stiff.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the liquor with the meat, forcemeat balls, egg yolks, salt, cayenne, and sherry.

  2. Stew for 1½ hours until ready to 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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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 gelatinous meat and body that give the soup its rich texture.
Pig's head
Adds meat and gelatin, deepening the body and richness of the soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, mild texture and body to the finished soup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, gelatinous liquor.

The step that matters

Straining and cooling the liquor. Cooling lets fat rise and set on the surface so it can be removed, and the liquor must gel to a jelly-like consistency. Too little simmering leaves it thin, while over-reduction makes it stiff.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, mushroom, shallot, egg, pepper, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, mushroom, shallot, egg, pepper, sherry. 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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