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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with calf head, tongue, veal, salt pork, and thickened with browned flour, served with fried meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the head and tongue

  1. Boil the calf's head and tongue in 4 to 5 quarts of water until the meat is tender.

  2. Strain the soup through a sieve and reserve the good pieces of meat.

  3. Add the meat back to the soup and season with salt, pepper, allspice, clove, and cayenne.

Thicken and make the force-meat balls

  1. Thicken the soup with 1 cup of browned flour and stir in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. For the force-meat balls, chop together the veal and salt pork, then season with salt, pepper, curry powder, and sweet herbs.

  3. Mix the meat with the yolks of 2 eggs, form into balls, and fry until brown.

Serve

  1. Drop the fried balls into the soup and 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Calf's head
Provides rich gelatin and body as it cooks into the broth.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, deeper colour and flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the chopped meat so the force-meat balls hold their shape.
Veal
Forms the mild, tender base of the force-meat balls.
Salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the force-meat balls moist and flavourful.

The step that matters

Frying the force-meat balls until brown. Frying browns the outside through Maillard reactions, giving flavour and colour. If the pan is too cool, the balls steam, turn grey and can fall apart in the soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, allspice, flour, butter, veal, pork, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, flour, butter, veal, pork, 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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