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Mock-turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf head and feet, forcemeat balls, wine, eggs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the calf's head and feet in enough water to cover them, skimming the surface until the meat is easily cut from the bones.

  2. Remove the bones and cut the meat into small pieces.

  3. Strain the broth over the meat.

  4. Add ground pepper, pounded cloves, and sweet herbs.

  5. Return to a clean kettle and simmer without boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, add forcemeat balls the size of large walnuts.

  2. Reserve some to fry in butter until golden brown.

  3. Pour in a bottle of claret or port wine.

  4. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes.

  5. When ready to serve, cut the eggs in half and garnish the dish with them and slices of lemon.

  6. Serve the fried forcemeat balls hot on small oval dishes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides gelatin and meat that thicken and body the broth as it simmers.
Calf's feet
Release gelatin during long simmering, giving the soup a rich, silky texture.
Forcemeat balls
Add a firm, savory meaty body that holds its shape in the soup.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the broth.
Eggs
Boiled and halved as a garnish, adding richness and a firm, mild contrast.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling a broth with meat and gelatin makes it cloudy and can toughen the meat, so it should only simmer gently.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, clove, bread, beef, port wine, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, clove, bread, beef, port wine, 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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