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White Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from a calf's head, ham, vegetables, herbs, and a roux, finished with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the head

  1. Boil the calf's head in water with the ham, onion, turnip, carrot, and chopped herbs. Cover the pot.

  2. Stew slowly until the bones fall from the meat.

  3. Remove the head.

  4. Cut the meat.

  5. Return the bones to the soup.

  6. Divide the meat into two portions.

  7. Set one portion aside to cool.

  8. Season the other portion.

  9. Strain half the stock over the seasoned meat.

  10. Refrigerate the strained stock until cool.

  11. Chop the calf's ears and less desirable meat parts finely.

  12. Return the chopped parts to the soup.

  13. Boil gently for 30 minutes.

Make the roux

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Stir in the flour until bubbling but not browned.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of the soup.

  4. Boil for 1 minute.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Stir in the cooled mixture.

  3. Bring to a boil while skimming.

  4. Add diced meat from the cold head.

  5. Simmer briefly.

  6. Pour into a tureen.

  7. Add boiling hot milk.

  8. Serve.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the thickened soup.
Milk
Added hot at the end to add creaminess and mellow the soup's flavor.
Calf's head
Provides gelatin-rich meat and bones that give the soup body and flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until bubbling but not browned. Flour browned in butter loses much of its thickening power and changes the soup's color and flavor. Cooking it until bubbling, without browning, lets the starch swell evenly when the stock is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, turnip, flour, butter, milk, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, turnip, flour, butter, milk, 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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