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Mock Turtle

A stew of moorfowl in a seasoned gravy with Port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the birds

  1. Truss the moorfowl, keeping their heads on, and draw the legs inside the body.

  2. Mix salt, pepper, and flour with a piece of butter; place a small amount inside each bird.

  3. Fry the birds in butter until nicely browned.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Brown some butter and flour, then add good gravy seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, and pounded cloves.

  2. Boil the sauce, add the moorfowl, and let them stew slowly until tender.

  3. Before serving, add ½ cup of Port wine.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Moorfowl
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Browned with butter to thicken the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Browns the birds and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Good gravy
Provides the liquid base of the sauce that the birds stew in.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the finished sauce when added before serving.

The step that matters

Let the moorfowl stew slowly until tender. Gentle simmering lets connective tissue break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender; a hard boil can toughen the meat and make it dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, clove, mushroom, ketchup, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, clove, mushroom, ketchup, port wine. 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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