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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf head, ham, stock, herbs, and spices, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 36 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

10 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scald the head with the skin on, remove the brain, tie the head up in a cloth, and let it boil for 1 hour.

  2. Take the meat from the bones, cut it into small square pieces, and throw them into cold water.

  3. Put the meat into a stewpan, cover with stock, and let it boil gently for an hour, or more if not quite tender, and set it on one side.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in another stewpan, add the ham, cut small, with the herbs, parsley, onions, shalots, mushrooms, and nearly a pint of stock; let these simmer slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Dredge in as much flour as will dry up the butter.

  3. Fill up with the remainder of the stock, add the wine, let it stew gently for 10 minutes, rub it through a tammy, and put it to the calf's head.

Season and stew

  1. Season with cayenne, and, if required, a little salt; add the juice of the orange and lemon; and when liked, ¼ teaspoonful of pounded mace, and the sugar.

  2. Put all the ingredients, except the forcemeat balls and lemon-juice, in an earthen jar, and stew for 6 hours.

  3. Do not open it till cold.

  4. It can be flavoured with a tablespoonful of anchovy, or Harvey's sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. When wanted for use, skim off all the fat, and strain carefully; place it on the fire, cut up the meat into inch-and-a-half squares, put it, with the forcemeat balls and lemon-juice, into the soup, and serve.

  2. Put in the forcemeat balls, simmer 5 minutes, and serve very hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

875Calories
45 gProtein
12 gFat
141 gCarbs

Counts 12 of 14 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 12 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Anchovy100g210
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Thyme1 tsp dried (1.4g)4
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock and butter base so the soup has body.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the soup.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth as a seasoning.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the fat and strain before reheating. Fat that is not removed after the long cooling stew would sit on the surface and make the soup greasy, while straining keeps the clear texture the soup is meant to have.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, flour, anchovy, onion, lemon, orange, sugar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, flour, anchovy, onion, lemon, orange, sugar. 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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