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Mock-turtle Soup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,823 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mock-turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter in a frying pan and add chopped sage.

  2. Thicken the soup with the browned flour or roux.

  3. Season with white pepper, Jamaica pepper, cayenne, mace, shallot, basil, and lemon peel.

  4. Strain the soup through a sieve into a fresh pot and add the hash of the head.

  5. Heat the soup and add Madeira wine just before serving.

  6. Add the forcemeat balls and egg-balls to the soup.

  7. Squeeze in the lemon juice and stir gently.

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. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, mace, shallot, basil, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, mace, shallot, basil, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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