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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made with black beans, stock, spices, lemon, eggs, meatballs, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the soup

  1. Boil the soaked black beans until soft, then mash through a colander.

  2. Add the mashed beans to the strong stock and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in ground cloves, mixed pepper and cinnamon, brown sugar, and salt.

Serve

  1. In a soup tureen, layer sliced lemon, chopped hard boiled eggs, and force meat balls.

  2. Pour the hot soup over the ingredients in the tureen and serve.

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

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beans + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Thicken the stock and give the soup its body and dark colour once mashed.
Strong stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm, chopped texture and richness to each serving.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the savoury soup.

The step that matters

Boil the soaked black beans until soft, then mash through a colander. Beans must be fully softened before mashing, or they stay grainy and will not thicken the stock smoothly into a body-rich soup.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, egg, meat):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, egg, meat. 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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