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Mock-turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's feet, onions, carrots, celery, and seasonings, finished with butter, flour, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock-turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Wash and clean the calf's head and feet.

  2. Place them in the water over moderate heat and skim frequently.

  3. Simmer until the meat is tender.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the bones from the meat, skin the tongue, and return the bones to the pot with sliced vegetables, herbs, and cloves stuck in a piece of onion.

  2. Cook for 2 hours, then strain and refrigerate overnight.

  3. In the morning, remove the fat from the top.

  4. Melt the butter in a saucepan, brown the flour, and gradually add the boiling soup.

  5. Cut the meat into dice and add it to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring to a boil and season with salt, cayenne pepper, 2 teaspoons lemon juice, and 2 teaspoons sugar.

  2. Optionally, add a small amount of catsup, mushroom, or Worcestershire sauce instead of lemon juice.

  3. Slice the eggs and lemon into a tureen and pour the soup over them.

  4. Serve with egg or forcemeat balls.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet
Their meat and natural gelatin give the soup body and a rich, thick mouthfeel.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and forms the base for browning the flour.
Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the soup into a smooth, velvety body.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty broth.
Onions
Cooking them in the stock releases sweetness and savory aroma into the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling soup to the browned flour. Pour the hot soup in gradually while whisking. Adding it all at once or too fast lets the flour clump into lumps instead of dispersing into a smooth, thickened base.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, lemon, flour, clove, pepper, celery. 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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