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Clear Mock Turtle

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Clear Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the calf's head in cold water and remove the brains.

  2. Place it in a saucepan with slightly salted water and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Discard the water, then put the head in 3 quarts of cold water with a little salt and 12 peppercorns.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim carefully, then reduce heat and simmer gently.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of cold water every half-hour to raise the scum, which must be removed, for 4 hours.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

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

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