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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, vegetables, spices, stock, tomatoes, diced face meat, egg, butter, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 head

  1. Clean and wash the calf's head, then soak it in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Cook the head in boiling salted water with mixed vegetables, cloves, peppercorns, allspice, and thyme until tender.

  3. Remove the head and boil the stock until reduced to 2 quarts.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter, add the flour, and stir until browned.

  2. Slowly pour in the strained stock, then add the strained tomatoes, diced face meat, and chopped hard boiled egg.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes, then season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Optionally, add a little Madeira wine.

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. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 gelatinous meat and body that gives the soup its characteristic texture.
Butter
Fat that carries the flour and adds richness to the soup base.
Flour
Browned in butter to form a roux that thickens the stock.
Strained stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
Strained tomatoes
Add acidity and color to the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred steadily until it reaches the intended color; scorched flour turns bitter and dark, while undercooked flour leaves a raw starchy taste and weaker thickening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, clove, allspice, thyme, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, clove, allspice, thyme, butter. 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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