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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf head, suet, veal, bread crumbs, eggs, wine, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the calf's head

  1. Clean the calf's head.

  2. Soak the calf's head in saltwater for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Soak the calf's head in fresh water.

  4. Boil the calf's head in cold water until cooked.

  5. Separate the meat from the bone.

  6. Strain the broth.

  7. Cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Mix the suet, veal, and bread crumbs with the same seasoning to make forcemeat balls.

  2. Fry the forcemeat balls in butter.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the meat pieces to the broth.

  2. Season the soup with coarse sea salt and Worcestershire sauce.

  3. Add the chopped hard-boiled eggs to the soup.

  4. Add the wine to the soup.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Veal + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together698 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Bread + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 gelatin that give the soup its body and rich texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat balls moist and tender during frying.
Veal
Supplies lean meat that gives the forcemeat balls their structure and savory flavor.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat mixture and absorb fat so the balls hold their shape.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, chopped texture to the soup.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich broth.

The step that matters

Boil the calf's head until cooked. Boiling must be long enough to soften the connective tissue and release gelatin from the bone, but not so hard that the meat falls apart and clouds the broth.

“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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