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Soup

Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head meat and bones, with brown stock, meatballs, and hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

  1. Wash, scrape, and clean the calf's head.

  2. Soak the calf's head in cold water for at least 1 hour.

  3. Remove the brains and tongue.

  4. Soak the brains and tongue separately in cold water.

  5. Cut the head into pieces and place in a kettle.

  6. Add cold water and heat slowly.

  7. Skim thoroughly.

  8. Add salt and simmer for 3 hours or until the meat slips from the bones.

  9. Lay the meat flat on a plate to cool.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the bones again.

  2. Add spices and vegetables to the bones and simmer until reduced to 2 quarts.

  3. Strain the broth and let it cool.

  4. Remove the fat once cooled.

Make the soup

  1. Half an hour before serving, bring the stock to a boil.

  2. In another saucepan, brown the butter.

  3. Add flour and cook until browned.

  4. Add ground pepper, thyme or marjoram, and salt.

  5. Mix in the brown stock and cook until thickened.

  6. Cut the face meat into ½ inch cubes.

  7. Add 1 cup of diced meat.

  8. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes.

  9. Slice the eggs or make yolk balls.

  10. Make meatballs with the reserved meat.

  11. Place the meatballs and hard-boiled eggs in a tureen.

  12. Add the soup and serve with lemon slices or 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. 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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

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 gelatine that give the soup its body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked in butter to form a roux.
Butter
Carries flavour and, when browned, adds a nutty aroma to the thickening base.
Eggs
Provide the hard-boiled eggs and yolk balls served in the tureen.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and depth to the bone broth.
Brown stock
Supplies the main liquid and savoury depth of the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour cooked in butter must brown evenly without scorching; scorched starch turns bitter and dark, while properly cooked roux thickens the stock smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, carrot, turnip, onion, egg, celery, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, carrot, turnip, onion, egg, celery, lemon. 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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