Skip to main content
Main

Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, veal knuckle, onions, spices, anchovies, butter, flour, Madeira wine, and meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scald the hair off the calf's head.

  2. Wash the calf's head clean.

  3. Boil the head in a large pot of water for half an hour.

  4. Remove the skin and tongue.

  5. Add the tongue and skin to the broth made from a knuckle of veal, along with onions, cloves, mace, nutmeg, herbs, and anchovies.

  6. Stew until tender.

  7. Cut the meat into 2-inch pieces.

  8. Slice the tongue, removing the skin.

  9. Strain the broth through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the strained liquor.

  4. Stir continuously to avoid lumps.

  5. Add the meat.

  6. Add the Madeira wine.

  7. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and Kyan pepper.

  8. Incorporate meatballs before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 stewed until tender.
Butter
Fat that melts with the flour to form the base for thickening the soup.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth into a smooth, body-rich sauce when cooked in butter.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour, rounding out the rich broth.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury depth to the broth, mostly unnoticed as a salty, umami background.
Onions
Give sweetness and aromatic body to the broth as it stews.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter, then adding the broth. Flour must be cooked smooth into the melted butter before liquid goes in, and the broth added gradually while stirring constantly. Otherwise starch clumps stay trapped as lumps and the thickened sauce turns uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, madeira wine, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, madeira wine, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes