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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with beef stock, calf's head, ham knuckle, vegetables, eggs, lemon, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine beef stock, calf's head, and ham knuckle in a pot.

  2. Slice and brown the ham knuckle.

  3. Add onions, carrot, turnip, and celery.

  4. Sprinkle with flour.

  5. Simmer all ingredients together for 3 hours.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut some meat from the head into dice.

  2. Add chopped hard boiled eggs, shredded lemon, and sherry wine.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides gelatin and meat that give the soup body and a rich texture.
Ham knuckle
Adds smoky, savoury depth to the stock when browned first.
Flour
Lightly thickens the stock as it simmers.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a warm, nutty aroma to finish the soup.
Lemon
Brightens the soup with acidity and citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer all ingredients together for 3 hours. A long, gentle simmer lets collagen from the head and knuckle break down into gelatin, giving the soup body. Boiling hard can make the stock cloudy and the meat tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, parsley. 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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