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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, seasoned with salt, cayenne, lemon, and herbs, served with quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Cut the calf's head into 1-inch square pieces.

  2. Boil the pieces in a sauce.

  3. Remove scum and fat from the broth.

Season and finish

  1. Season the broth with coarse sea salt, Cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Add quenelles.

  3. Melt butter in a pan. Mince onions. Sweat onions with herbs over low heat.

  4. Moisten the mixture with some sauce.

  5. Strain the mixture through a tammy.

  6. Mix the herb mixture with the sauce to achieve a green color.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 the gelatinous body and rich texture that give the soup its character.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the sweated onions and herbs.
Onions
Sweetness and aroma once softened slowly over low heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Removing scum and fat from the broth. Skimming during boiling removes impurities and excess fat that would otherwise cloud the broth and make it greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, butter, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, butter, parsley. 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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