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To Drejs a Mock Turtle

A rich stew of calf head, sweetbreads, mushrooms, and Madeira wine, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 636 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Drejs a Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scald the calf's head in water until the hair comes off, then clean and wash it in warm water.

  2. Boil the head for 45 minutes, then remove it from the water and carefully cut off the meat with the skin, avoiding breaking the ears.

  3. Stuff the ears with force-meat and tie them with cloths.

  4. Remove the eyes and pick the remaining meat from the bones.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the picked meat with the fat part of another boiled calf's head and the veal gravy.

  2. Lay the skin in the pot and stew over moderate heat for 1 hour.

  3. Add the fried sweetbreads, morels, truffles, artichoke bottoms, chopped anchovy, Cayenne pepper, salt, lemon juice, Madeira wine, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, and mushrooms.

  4. Stew slowly for another 30 minutes.

  5. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

Make the force-meat and serve

  1. Prepare the hard-boiled egg yolks and cut the brains into nutmeg-sized pieces.

  2. Make a rich force-meat and spread it on the caul of a leg of veal.

  3. Roll it up and boil in a cloth for 1 hour.

  4. After boiling, cut the force-meat into 3 parts, with the middle piece the largest.

  5. Place the meat in a dish and lay the head on top, skin side up, with the largest piece of force-meat in between.

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. Artichoke + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Artichoke + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 skin that give the soup its body and texture.
Veal gravy
Forms the savoury base that the other ingredients are stewed in.
Sweetbreads
Add a tender, rich texture to the soup once fried and stewed.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fortified flavour to the stewed soup.
Flour and butter
Thicken the soup into a richer, more body-filled consistency.
Morels
Contribute an earthy, aromatic flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and the soup kept at a gentle simmer so it thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste.

“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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