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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, veal shin, vegetables, spices, and a touch of sherry and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and veal

  1. Split and scrape the calf's head and saw the veal bone into several pieces; wash all carefully.

  2. Soak the head in a large pan covered with cold water for 2 hours, then drain thoroughly and remove the brains.

  3. Place the head and shin of veal in a soup kettle with the water; heat slowly and keep at boiling point for 3 hours.

  4. After 3 hours, skim out the shin of veal and remove the head carefully; strain the stock and set aside 6 quarts to cool.

Make the soup

  1. Return 2 quarts of stock to the kettle with the shin of veal; add the spices, cover tightly, and simmer slowly.

  2. Fry the vegetables in butter for 20 minutes, browning them at the end; then add to the veal and simmer for 4 hours.

  3. Strain the stock and let it cool; in the morning, remove the fat and combine the two quantities of stock on the fire with ketchup, salt, and pepper.

  4. When boiling, add the lemon juice and sherry.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 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 body, giving the soup its rich, thick texture as it simmers.
Shin of veal
Adds meaty flavour and gelatin to the stock during long simmering.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavour and helps them brown when fried.
Arrow-root
Starch that thickens the soup, giving it a smooth, slightly glossy body.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances its savoury depth.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of acidity and sweetness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skimming and removing the fat. Chilling the stock overnight lets fat rise and set on top, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Fat left in the soup makes it greasy and dulls its flavour.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, butter, ketchup, celery, clove. 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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