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Soup

Mock Turtle

A savory soup of calf head, ox palates, cow heel, with lemon, sherry, anchovy, catsup, herbs, mace, pepper, onions, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the bones of the calf's head and place them in a saucepan with beef and veal bones.

  2. Season the bones with fried onions, herbs, mace, and pepper.

  3. Boil the ox palates until tender, then cut them into small pieces.

  4. Add the cow heel pieces for extra flavor.

Make the gravy

  1. In a separate pan, brown the butter, flour, and onion.

  2. Pour the gravy into the browned mixture and stir well.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the meats and stew together.

  2. Stir in the sherry, anchovy, walnut catsup, mushroom catsup, and chopped herbs.

  3. Squeeze the lemon juice into a tureen.

  4. Pour the prepared soup over the lemon juice.

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

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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 gelatinous body that give the soup its rich, mock-turtle character.
Flour
Browned with butter and onion to thicken the gravy and give it body.
Butter
Browned with flour and onion to add nutty flavor and fat for the gravy base.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the rich, meaty soup.
Ox palates
Contribute tender, gelatinous meat pieces that give the soup its texture.

The step that matters

Browning the butter, flour, and onion. Cooking the flour in butter until well browned builds the roux's color and nutty flavor, and it thickens the gravy only if the flour is cooked enough to lose its raw taste. Stirring constantly prevents scorching, which would make the gravy bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, meat, beef, veal, onion, pepper, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, meat, beef, veal, onion, pepper, butter. 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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