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Mock Turtle Soup

A rich soup of calf head, vegetables, and spices, thickened with butter and flour, finished with diced meat, eggs, lemon, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Clean the calf's head thoroughly and cut it into several pieces.

  2. Soak in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Drain the water.

  4. Add 4 quarts of cold water and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  5. Cook slowly until the meat slips from the bones.

  6. Remove the meat but leave the bones in.

  7. Add cloves, peppercorns, allspice, onions, carrots, turnip, celery roots, mixed herbs, and cinnamon.

  8. Simmer for 2 hours.

  9. Strain the stock and let it cool.

  10. Remove the fat before serving.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, brown 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and gradually stir in the stock.

  3. Season with salt and pepper if needed.

  4. Add ½ cup of diced cooked meat to every quart of stock, along with slices of hard-boiled egg or yolks made into balls, lemon juice, and thin slices of lemon rind.

  5. Stir in 2 tablespoons of sherry if desired.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 gelatin and meat that give the stock body and a rich mouthfeel.
Butter
Browned with flour to make a nutty roux that thickens and deepens the soup's flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked in browned butter, giving the soup a smoother body.
Cooked meat
Adds chewy texture and savoury substance to each serving of soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances its fattiness.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of sweetness and acidity to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Remove the fat before serving. Long simmering releases a lot of fat into the stock; skimming it after cooling keeps the soup clean-tasting and prevents it from feeling greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery, cinnamon, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery, cinnamon, butter. 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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