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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf head, feet, liver, salt pork, turnip, onions, spices, and sherry, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meats

  1. Clean the calf's head, feet, and liver thoroughly and separate them.

  2. In a pot, combine the calf's head, feet, liver, salt pork, and turnip.

  3. Cook the head and feet for 3 hours and the liver, pork, and turnip for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the cooked ingredients to a platter and serve with boiled potatoes and drawn butter.

Make the soup

  1. The next day, take the cooking liquid and place it in a soup kettle.

  2. Slice and cook the onions in water until tender, then add to the kettle.

  3. Carefully cut small pieces of meat from the bones and add to the kettle.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, black and red pepper, and enough flour to thicken.

  5. Just before serving, stir in butter, sugar, and sherry 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Gives the soup its body, rich gelatin, and meaty flavour as it cooks down.
Calf's feet
Release gelatin that gives the broth a silky, full-bodied texture.
Calf's liver
Adds a deep, savoury flavour to the cooking liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it has a smoother, heavier body.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a fragrant, nutty aroma stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to thicken. Flour must be fully mixed in and cooked through, or it stays lumpy and tastes raw. Stir it in smoothly and let the soup simmer so the starch thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pork, turnip, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, turnip, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, 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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