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Mock Turtle Soup

A savory soup made with a soup bone, water, onion, cloves, allspice, salt, pepper, parsley, claret, eggs, lemon, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the soup bone in 1 gallon of water until it falls apart.

  2. Chop the boiled bone finely.

  3. Add the chopped bone, onion, cloves, allspice, salt, pepper, and parsley to the pot. Simmer for a while, then just before serving, stir in the claret.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, add the chopped hard boiled eggs and lemon slices.

  2. If the soup is too thin, thicken it with a little flour.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Releases gelatin and flavour into the water, giving the broth body and a rich taste.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour, added late so its aroma is not cooked away.
Hard boiled eggs
Add texture and body as chopped garnish in the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth by starch gelatinising in the hot liquid, if the soup is too thin.

The step that matters

Stir in the claret just before serving. Wine's bright acidity and aroma are volatile and fade with long simmering, so adding it late keeps the flavour fresh.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, pepper, parsley, egg, lemon, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, pepper, parsley, egg, lemon, flour. 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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