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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, vegetables, spices, and stock, finished with butter, flour, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Clean the calf's head thoroughly and cut it into several pieces.

  2. Soak the pieces in cold water for 1 hour, then drain.

  3. Add 4 quarts of cold water and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt, and cook slowly until the meat slips from the bones.

  4. Remove the meat but leave the bones in the pot.

Make the stock

  1. Add cloves, peppercorns, allspice, sliced onions, sliced carrots, sliced turnip, celery roots, mixed herbs, and cinnamon stick.

  2. Let simmer for 2 hours, then strain and cool the stock.

  3. Before serving, remove the fat from the stock.

Finish and serve

  1. For each quart of stock, brown 1 tablespoon of butter, then add 1 tablespoon of flour and gradually stir in the stock.

  2. Season with salt and pepper if needed.

  3. Cut ½ cup of the cooked meat into small dice for each quart and add to the stock.

  4. Add slices of hard-boiled egg or yolk made into small balls, juice of ½ lemon, thin slices of lemon rind, and sherry if desired.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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 the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and rich texture.
Butter
Browned with flour to form a roux that thickens the stock and adds nutty flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked with browned butter into a roux.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances its savoury depth.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour roux. Cooking the flour in butter until lightly browned removes raw starch taste and builds colour and flavour. Stirring in the stock gradually prevents lumps, which form when liquid is added too fast to the flour.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery, cinnamon, 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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