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Mock Turtle Eggs

Mock Turtle Eggs are a savory mixture of stale bread, bacon, suet, eggs, spices, and flour, formed into balls and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak the stale bread in cold water until thoroughly soaked.

  2. Squeeze out excess water from the bread.

Make the dough

  1. Chop the bacon shoulder and kidney suet moderately fine.

  2. Combine the suet, bacon, eggs, white pepper, marjoram, basil, thyme, onions, parsley, salt, cayenne pepper, flour, and lukewarm water in a large bowl. Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

  3. Process the mixture through a sausage machine until very fine.

  4. Add enough flour to make a kneadable dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough into strips.

  2. Form small balls.

  3. Fry the balls in marrow fat until they are a nice brown color.

Pack

  1. Pack 4 balls into one-pound cans.

  2. Pack 8 balls into two-pound cans.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed bread adds bulk and binds the mixture into a dough.
Bacon shoulder
Fat from the bacon adds richness and moisture to the mixture.
Eggs
Eggs bind the mixture and help it hold its shape.
Flour
Flour adds body so the mixture can be rolled and shaped into a dough.
Kidney suet
Suet adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender.
Onions
Onions add savoury flavour and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the balls until nicely browned. Frying in fat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour and colour, and it helps the balls hold their shape before canning.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, marjoram, basil, thyme, onion, parsley):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, marjoram, basil, thyme, onion, 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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