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Mock-turtle Soup

A broth made from calf's head, ham, onions, herbs, and optional wine, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock-turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Boil the calf's head in water for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain the calf's head.

  3. Place the calf's head in a pot with cold water, salt, and white pepper.

  4. Heat the pot.

  5. Remove from heat when half cooked.

  6. Dice the meat and return it to a stewpan.

Make the broth

  1. Add thyme, bay leaf, nutmeg, onions, butter, and diced ham.

  2. Cook until the mixture turns yellow.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. In a pan, melt butter. Gradually add flour while stirring until brown.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a pot.

  6. Cover with cold water and add parsley.

  7. Boil for about 2.5 hours until the broth is thick.

  8. Strain the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, add lemon juice, Madeira wine, Cayenne pepper, and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  2. Discard thyme, bay leaf, parsley, and onions.

  3. Serve warm in bowls.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and rich texture.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and, with flour, starts the roux that thickens the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks with the butter into a roux.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the soup with richness and a smooth, creamy body when added.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter. Flour must be stirred in gradually so it cooks into a smooth roux without lumps; adding it all at once clumps and thickens unevenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, nutmeg, onion, clove, butter, ham, flour):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, nutmeg, onion, clove, butter, ham, flour. 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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