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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf head, vegetables, and enriched with liver, brains, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and stock

  1. Soak the calf's head in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the brains and clean the head.

  3. In a large pot, boil the head in 6 quarts of cold water for 2 hours.

  4. Add the liver and lights, tying the brains in a small cloth and boiling for 1.5 hours.

  5. Strain the broth into a jar and let it cool overnight.

  6. Remove the fat once cooled.

Make the soup

  1. In a soup pot, melt a little butter and brown 2 chopped onions. Stir constantly to prevent burning, then dredge in a little flour.

  2. Cut the calf's head into small pieces and add to the pot with the stock.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the vegetable broth into the pot and boil for another 1.5 hours.

  5. Add 1 pint of red wine and bring to a boil.

Make the balls and serve

  1. For the force-meat balls, finely chop some liver, lights, and brains. Mix with salt, pepper, spices, sweet herbs, and 2 raw eggs. Form into small balls and roll in breadcrumbs, then fry in hot butter or lard.

  2. For the yolk balls, mash the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs with 1 tablespoon of flour and a little salt. Form into balls.

  3. If the soup is not rich enough, braid ¼ pound of butter with 1 tablespoon of flour and stir into the soup, boiling for 5 minutes.

  4. In a tureen, combine the force-meat balls, yolk balls, and lemon pieces. Pour the hot soup over them.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 meat that give the soup its body and richness.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.
Raw eggs
Bind the force-meat balls so they hold their shape while frying.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mashed with flour form soft, tender yolk balls in the soup.
Butter
Browns the onions for flavour and, if added, enriches the soup with fat.
Flour
Thickens the soup and helps bind the butter for richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the onions while browning. Onions with butter burn easily, and burnt sugars turn the soup bitter and dark. Constant stirring keeps them evenly golden and gives the soup a sweeter, deeper flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, clove, butter, flour, red wine, liver):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, clove, butter, flour, red wine, liver. 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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