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Mock-Turtle Soup

A savory soup made with calf head, pork, egg balls, forcemeat, and seasonings, thickened with wine and sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock-Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a soup kettle, combine onions, sweet herbs, celery, pepper, and pounded mace.

  2. Fill the kettle with water and boil gently until the meat is tender.

  3. Remove the head and pork, separate the meat from the bones, and return the bones to the soup.

  4. Let it stew for several hours, then cool and remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and thicken it, adding white wine, lemon juice, and Harvey's sauce.

  2. Cut the meat from half the head and the pork into pieces, and warm them in the soup with egg balls and forcemeat.

  3. In a separate pot, fry shallots in batter, dredge with flour, and stir into the gravy.

  4. Add the head and Madeira wine, and simmer until the meat is tender.

  5. Before serving, add basil, tarragon, chives, parsley, cayenne pepper, salt, mushroom ketchup, and soy sauce.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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
Its bones and connective tissue release gelatin, giving the soup body and richness.
Onions
Cook slowly in the stock, adding savoury depth and a mild sweetness.
Egg balls
Egg proteins set when heated, giving the balls a firm, tender texture.
Madeira wine
Adds sweet, rich, fortified-wine flavour to the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the soup.

The step that matters

Cool and remove the fat. Chilling the soup lets fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off cleanly. Removing it before adding wine and seasonings keeps the finished soup from tasting greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, pepper, white wine, lemon, sauce, pork):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, pepper, white wine, lemon, sauce, pork. 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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