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Soup

Mock Turtle

A hearty soup made from cow heel, vegetables, wine, and lemon, finished with a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Scald the cow heel and place it in a pot with water.

  2. Add chopped carrots, turnips, and onions stuck with cloves.

  3. Simmer for 3-4 hours.

  4. Remove the feet, let them cool, and take off the meat.

  5. Return the bones and any cleaned fish or poultry debris to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Make a roux with butter and flour, then strain and mix in the stock gradually.

  2. Add lemon juice and wine to taste, then let it simmer until ready.

  3. Serve with farce‑balls and eggs.

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. Turnip + oniontop 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. Carrot + oniontop 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

Cow heel
Gives the stock body and a rich, gelatinous texture as it simmers.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, thickening the soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the stock when cooked with butter into a roux.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to balance the rich stock.
Lemons
Juice adds sharp acidity that brightens the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the roux into the stock. Adding stock to the roux gradually, while stirring, keeps the flour smooth and lump-free, so the soup thickens evenly instead of clumping.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, clove, wine, butter, 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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