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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, ham, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with eggs, lemons, and buttered crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and broth

  1. Boil the calf's head and ham until the meat falls apart; strain and set aside to cool.

  2. The next day, skim the fat, add the soup vegetables, and mix with the calf's head broth and some meat from the head; boil for an hour.

  3. Boil the calf's head and feet until the meat separates from the bones; remove bones and cut meat into 1‑inch pieces; return to pot and boil for 2 more hours.

Add the flavourings

  1. Chop the brains finely, add onions and parsley, mix in spices, and add to the soup an hour before it's done.

  2. Roll the crackers with butter and add them to the soup when nearly finished.

  3. Moisten the browned flour and stir it into the soup before adding the force‑meat and egg balls.

  4. In a saucepan, melt butter, add flour, stir until brown, then add broth; boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Add diced calf's head and boil for another 5 minutes; then add diced hard‑boiled eggs, lemon, mushrooms, and truffles; boil for 5 minutes more.

Serve

  1. After adding the force‑meat balls, let it boil and serve immediately with sliced hard‑boiled eggs and lemons in the tureen.

  2. Serve the soup over the sliced eggs and lemon in the tureen.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the gelatin and rich meaty body that gives the soup its texture.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they cook down into the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and is used to brown the flour roux.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a mild, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the rich broth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked until evenly brown; stopping early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while overcooking burns it and gives a bitter flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, flour, meat, egg, lemon, onion, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour, meat, egg, lemon, onion, parsley. 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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