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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf head, offal, veal, salt pork, and eggs, simmered with onions, herbs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Prepare the broth

  1. In a large pot, boil the calf's head and harslet in water until tender.

  2. Remove the meat, strain the broth, and skim off the fat.

  3. Cut the meat, heart, and liver into 1-inch pieces and return them to the broth.

  4. Add the finely chopped onions, cloves, mace, pepper, and salt to taste.

  5. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  6. Add the whole yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and the chopped whites to the soup.

Make the balls

  1. Chop the remaining harslet, veal, salt pork, and brains together.

  2. Mix in pepper, salt, sweet herbs, sage, and 1 egg.

  3. Form the mixture into balls the size of half an egg and fry in butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup hot, adding lemon slices for flavor.

  2. Add some fried balls to the soup and serve the rest on a dish garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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 head
Provides rich gelatin and body for the broth as it simmers until tender.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks and chopped whites add richness and texture to the finished soup.
Veal
Adds meaty flavor and body to the chopped mixture for the fried balls.
Egg
Binds the chopped meat mixture so it holds its shape when formed into balls.
Butter
Fries the balls, adding richness and browning to their surface.
Lemons
Add bright acidity that lifts the flavor of the rich broth.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the balls. The chopped mixture is loose and needs the egg to bind it; if it is too wet or not shaped firmly, the balls can fall apart in the butter. Frying over steady heat until golden browns the outside and sets the shape.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, egg, lemon, veal, pork. 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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