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Mock Turtle Soup

A creamy soup made with butter, flour, stock, spices, lemon, eggs, and meat, finished with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a soup kettle until it bubbles.

  2. Add the flour and stir until brown.

  3. Gradually add the hot soup stock.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, mace, thyme, cloves, and bay leaf, then let simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. In a soup tureen, combine the sliced lemon, hard-boiled eggs, and soup meat.

  2. Strain the soup into the tureen.

  3. If desired, substitute egg balls for the meat.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the stock as it cooks with the butter, giving the soup body.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries all the flavour.
Soup meat
Adds savoury body and chewy texture to the finished soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds richness and a soft, firm texture to the soup in the tureen.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a fragrant, nutty depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until brown. The flour and butter must cook long enough to brown for flavour, but not burn, since scorched flour turns bitter and dark. Stir constantly over moderate heat to keep the roux even.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, thyme, clove, lemon, egg. 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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