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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from boiled meat stock, onion, potatoes, spices, eggs, lemon, and sour wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Take the stock from 2½ pounds of boiling meat.

  2. Add 1 small onion, 2 diced medium potatoes, ½ teaspoon each of cloves, allspice, celery seed, and salt to taste.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are done.

  4. Then add 3 sliced hard boiled eggs, the juice of 1 lemon, half a lemon sliced thin, and ⅓ cup sour wine.

  5. Let simmer for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 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

Boiling meat
Provides the stock that forms the base of the soup.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a rich, mellow flavor to the finished soup.
Potatoes
Thicken the broth slightly as they soften and add substance.
Sour wine
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the soup.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer after adding the eggs, wine and lemon. Once the acidic ingredients go in, the soup should simmer gently rather than boil hard. Vigorous boiling can break up the sliced eggs and make the broth cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, potato, clove, allspice, celery, egg, lemon):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, clove, allspice, celery, egg, lemon. 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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