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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, ham, vegetables, browned flour, eggs, lemon, butter, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the calf's head and ham until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Strain the broth and let it cool.

  3. Skim off the fat the next day.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the boiled vegetables and some meat from the head to the broth.

  2. Boil for one hour before serving.

  3. Mix the browned flour with a little broth and stir it into the soup.

  4. Add force-meat balls made from veal and let it boil briefly.

  5. Serve with sliced hard-boiled 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Browned flour
Thickens the broth and adds a toasted, deeper color and flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a mild, creamy garnish that contrasts the rich broth.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the heavy, rich broth.

The step that matters

Stir the browned flour in smoothly. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it first with a little cool broth gives a smooth, evenly thickened soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, celery, flour, egg, lemon, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, celery, flour, egg, lemon, pepper. 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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