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Mock Turtle

A stew of bacon or ham, beef, cow heel, carrot rind, lemon thyme, parsley, basil, shallots, onion, cloves, allspice, black pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Line the bottom of a stewpan with bacon or ham.

  2. Add beef, cow heel, carrot rind, lemon thyme, parsley, basil, and shallots in a bundle tied with a couple of blades of mace.

  3. Stick cloves into the onion and add it to the stewpan with allspice and black pepper.

Simmer

  1. Pour in cold water, cover the stewpan, and set it on a slow fire to boil gently for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover to prevent the meat from catching.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 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

Gravy beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and substance of the broth.
Cow heel
Its collagen breaks down during slow cooking, giving the broth body and a silky feel.
Bacon or ham
Its fat and salty, savoury flavour season the broth from the bottom of the pot.
Onion
Cooks down to add sweetness and depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. Boiling hard agitates the fat and proteins in the liquid, which breaks them up and clouds the broth, and can toughen the meat. A slow, gentle simmer keeps the stock clear and the meat tender.

“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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