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Soup

Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, stock, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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

Prepare the calf's head

  1. Clean and wash the calf's head and soak it in cold water for one hour.

  2. Cook the head in three quarts of boiling salted water with seasonings and vegetables until tender.

  3. Remove the head and boil the stock until reduced to one quart. Strain and cool.

Make the soup

  1. Melt and slightly brown the butter, then add flour and stir until well browned.

  2. Gradually pour in the brown stock, then add the calf's head stock, tomatoes, diced calf's head meat, and lemon juice.

  3. Simmer for eight minutes, then add diced Royal Custard and Madeira wine.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Butter
Fat that is browned with the flour to build a nutty, richer flavour.
Calf's head meat
Provides the main meat and body of the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury stock.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Stirring until the roux is well browned develops nutty flavour and colour; under-browned flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while scorching makes it bitter.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, butter, allspice, flour, thyme, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, butter, allspice, flour, thyme, parsley. 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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