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Calf's Head or Mock Turtle Soup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Calf's Head or Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, fry the chopped vegetables in butter until browned.

  2. Combine the fried vegetables with the veal and the water from boiling the head.

  3. Cook slowly for 1 hour, then strain the soup.

  4. Return the strained soup to the kettle and add lemon slices, sherry or port, salt, and pepper.

  5. Mix flour with a little water to form a soft paste and add it to the soup.

  6. Stir in the tomato ketchup and add egg and force-meat balls.

  7. Serve hot. Leftover soup can be reheated the next day.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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