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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, feet, and various aromatics, finished with butter, crackers, and diced eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and feet

  1. Boil the calf's head and feet until the meat separates from the bones.

  2. Remove the bones and cut the meat into 1-inch pieces; return it to the pot and boil for 2 more hours.

  3. Chop the brains finely and add to the pot along with the onions and parsley.

Season and thicken

  1. Mix the spices (mace, clover, pepper, and salt) and add to the soup an hour before it's done.

  2. Crush the crackers and mix with the butter; add to the soup when nearly done.

  3. Brown the flour in a saucepan with 2 ounces of butter, then stir in the broth and boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the diced calf's head, mushrooms, and truffles; boil for another 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, combine the diced hard-boiled eggs and lemon, then pour the soup over them.

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

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Supplies gelatinous meat and body, giving the soup its rich, thick mouthfeel.
Calf's feet
Release collagen as they simmer, adding gelatin that gives the broth body and a silky texture.
Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and carries flavour, and browns the flour for the roux.
Flour
Browned in butter to form a roux that thickens the broth.
Crackers
Crushed crumbs that add starch and help thicken the soup as they dissolve.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, mild richness and texture to the soup in the tureen.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in butter for the roux. Cooking flour in fat until it browns develops flavour and colour, and the roux then thickens the broth smoothly when liquid is added, without lumps forming.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, beef, mushroom. 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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