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Mock-turtle Soup

A soup made from calf head, brains, ham, herbs, and Madeira wine, finished with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mock-turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Clean and wash the calf's head, split it in two, and save the brains.

  2. Boil the head in plenty of water until tender.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew pan, fry the ham, parsley, thyme, leeks, cloves, and pepper in butter until browned.

  2. Add the boiling water from the head to the stew pan.

  3. Cut the meat from the head into neat square pieces and add to the soup.

  4. Stir in the Madeira wine, lemon, Cayenne pepper, and salt to taste.

  5. Let it simmer gently for two hours, then skim it clear.

Make the forcemeat and serve

  1. For the forcemeat, pour hot water over the brains and heat for a few minutes.

  2. Chop the brains with parsley, salt, pepper, flour, butter, and beaten egg.

  3. Form small balls and drop them into the soup fifteen minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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 meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and richness.
Brains
Chopped with egg and flour, they bind into forcemeat balls that give a soft, creamy texture.
Egg
Binds the chopped brains and flour so the forcemeat balls hold their shape.
Leeks
Softened in butter, they add sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and rich, fortified flavour that rounds out the soup.
Butter
Fat for frying the aromatics, carrying flavour and aiding browning.

The step that matters

Skimming after the two-hour simmer. Gentle simmering with skimming removes fat and foam that would otherwise cloud the broth. Boiling hard would emulsify fat into it and make the soup cloudy and greasy.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper, butter, madeira wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekthe original
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper, butter, madeira 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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