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Mock Turtle Soup

A broth made from a calf head, ham, vegetables, and spices, thickened with cornflour and served with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Wash, soak, and blanch the calf head.

  2. Place the head in a pot with water, salt, and ham.

  3. Bring the pot to a boil and skim off any foam.

  4. Add the chopped vegetables, cloves, and peppercorns.

  5. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours.

  6. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  7. Let the soup cool, then remove the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken the soup with cornflour mixed with sherry.

  2. Add lemon juice.

  3. Add cayenne.

Make the forcemeat balls and serve

  1. For the forcemeat balls, mix bread crumbs, suet, parsley, pepper, salt, lemon rind, and beaten egg to form small balls.

  2. Poach the balls in boiling salted water until cooked through.

  3. Garnish with diced pieces of the head and forcemeat balls.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf head
Forms the body of the soup and gives it rich gelatin texture as it simmers.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained soup so it has a fuller, smoother body.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat mixture so the small balls hold together while poaching.
Suet
Adds fat to the forcemeat balls, keeping them moist and tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the rich stock.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after cooling. Fat rises and sets on top of a cooled stock. Leaving it in leaves the soup greasy, so it must be lifted off before the soup is finished and reheated.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, onion, celery, clove, lemon, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, onion, celery, clove, lemon, sherry. 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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