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Mock-turtle Soup

A soup made with meat, spices, flour, sugar, egg yolks, ketchup, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mock-turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the meat until tender, then remove and cut into small pieces.

  2. Return the meat to the pot and season with mace, cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns, and chopped onion.

  3. Grind the spices before adding them.

  4. Brown the flour in a pan to thicken the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Burn the sugar until caramelized, then add it to the soup along with the egg yolks and tomato ketchup.

  2. Boil all ingredients until fully cooked.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the claret or other wine.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned flour thickens the soup and adds a toasty, nutty flavour.
Egg yolks
Rubbed-fine yolks enrich the soup and help give it a smooth, thick body.
Sugar
Caramelized sugar adds sweetness and a deep, slightly bitter colour.
Tomato ketchup
Adds acidity, sweetness and savoury depth to the soup.
Claret or other wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour browned slowly in a dry pan toasts evenly and thickens well. If it scorches, it turns bitter and can spoil the soup's flavour, so it needs steady heat and constant stirring.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mace, clove, cinnamon, flour, sugar, egg):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mace, clove, cinnamon, flour, sugar, 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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