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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, ham, pig's feet, herbs, spices, and a mixture of egg yolks and walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the calf's head, ham, pig's feet, and soup herbs in 2 gallons of water for 4 hours.

  2. Remove the head and take out the bones.

  3. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  4. Return the meat to the soup with cloves, allspice, and mace.

Make the egg balls

  1. Mix the hard-boiled egg yolks, raw egg yolk, and a little flour until smooth.

  2. Form the mixture into balls the size of bird eggs.

Finish and serve

  1. One hour before serving, add butter, browned flour, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Fifteen minutes before serving, add walnut catsup, egg balls, and brown sugar.

  3. If desired, add Sherry or Madeira to the tureen before serving the soup.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Gives gelatin and body to the broth, so it becomes rich and thick as it simmers.
Pig's feet
Adds gelatin, which gives the soup a silky, full mouthfeel.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, deep brown color and flavor.
Walnut catsup
Adds savory, tangy depth that rounds out the flavor of the soup.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the body of the egg balls, giving them a soft, crumbly texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty broth.

The step that matters

Adding the browned flour. Flour thickens only when it is stirred in evenly and given time to cook; added in clumps or too late, it leaves lumps and a raw taste.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, allspice, butter, flour, pepper, lemon. 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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