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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's liver and veal, seasoned with onion, salt, pepper, cloves, thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the calf's liver and veal in water for 2 hours, skimming frequently.

  2. Strain the broth and chop the meat finely.

  3. In a pot, combine the chopped meat, onion, salt, pepper, and ground cloves.

  4. Thicken the mixture with browned flour and let it boil together.

  5. Serve by placing a slice of lemon and a quarter of hard boiled egg in each dish, then pour the soup over.

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

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

  2. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Adds a rich, deep flavour and body to the broth as it simmers.
Veal
Releases gelatin during long simmering, giving the soup body and a silky mouthfeel.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup as it boils and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming during the long boil. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise while the liver and veal simmer, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, veal, pepper, clove, flour, lemon, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, veal, pepper, clove, flour, lemon, egg. 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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