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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, beef broth, butter, flour, white wine, herbs, spices, and served with force meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,351 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Parboil the divided calf's head and cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Break the bones and boil them in beef broth.

Make the soup

  1. Fry shallots in butter, add flour to thicken, and stir it in.

  2. Skim carefully while it boils, then add the white wine.

  3. Let it simmer until the meat is tender.

  4. Add chives, parsley, basil, salt, cayenne, soy sauce, and mushroom ketchup to taste, and boil for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Squeeze lemon juice into a tureen, pour the soup over it, and serve with force meat 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. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Chive + basiltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the meat and gelatinous body of the soup once simmered until tender.
Beef broth
Forms the savoury liquid base in which the bones and meat cook.
Butter
Carries the frying of the aromatics and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it cooks, giving it a fuller body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the broth.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the rich flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Skim carefully while it boils. Foam and fat rising from the meat and bones can make the soup cloudy and greasy, so removing them keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, white wine, chive, parsley, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, white wine, chive, parsley, pepper. 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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