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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bones, vegetables, spices, veal, calf head, eggs, and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 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. Make stock by boiling meat bones in 8 gallons of water.

  2. Add carrots, onions, turnips, mace, cloves, allspice, laurel leaves, and whole peppers.

  3. Brown 4 pounds of meat scraps, sage, and summer savory in 1 pound of butter in the oven.

  4. Add 5 chopped carrots, 5 chopped turnips, and 5 chopped onions; brown together.

  5. Stir in 2 pounds of flour and brown it, then scrape into the boiling stock.

  6. Add 1 large spoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and caramel for color.

  7. Boil for 10 to 15 hours on low heat, then strain through a fine sieve.

  8. Let cool and skim off grease, then reheat and season to taste.

  9. Thicken to the consistency of heavy cream.

Prepare the fillings

  1. Prepare fillings by boiling and cleaning the calf's head and feet; use the bones in the stock.

  2. Cut the cooked head into dice-sized pieces and add to the stock an hour before serving.

  3. Fry 2 pounds of small-cut veal until brown and add to the soup.

  4. Boil 2 dozen eggs hard, separate the yolks, and mash them with flour to make a stiff paste.

  5. Form balls the size of marbles from the paste.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the stock as they simmer for hours.
Flour
Browned and stirred into the stock to thicken it and add a toasted, nutty depth.
Butter
Carries the browning of the meat scraps and vegetables, adding richness and aroma.
Eggs
Boiled, mashed with flour and shaped into balls that give the soup a firm, bready texture.
Veal
Fried until brown, adding meaty flavor and substance to the soup.
Caramel
Darkens the stock so it resembles true turtle soup in colour.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must brown fully before it goes into the stock; under-browned flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and weaker colour, while over-browned flour turns bitter and can scorch.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, beef, carrot, onion, turnip, clove, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, beef, carrot, onion, turnip, clove, allspice. 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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