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Mock-Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, flavored with herbs, sherry, and ketchup, served with boiled eggs and cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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. Halve the calf's head.

  2. Remove the brains.

  3. Add enough water to cover the head, along with sweet herbs, parsley, onions, and lemon peel.

  4. Stew gently until the meat is tender.

  5. Remove the meat from the soup.

  6. Let the meat cool.

Make the soup

  1. Thicken the soup with flour and butter.

  2. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  3. Add sherry wine, walnut ketchup, mushroom ketchup, pounded mace, and cayenne pepper.

Make the brain balls and cakes

  1. Beat the brains with a little flour and 2 eggs to make a light batter, adding pepper, salt, and finely chopped parsley.

  2. Form the batter into small portions. Tie each portion in muslin. Boil them into round balls.

  3. Fry the remaining batter into light brown cakes.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the cold head into small pieces.

  2. Add the pieces to the gravy with the cakes and boiled 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 main meat, which becomes tender and rich when stewed slowly in water.
Flour
Thickens the soup and binds the brain batter so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the thickened soup.
Eggs
Bind the brain batter, giving the balls and cakes structure when cooked.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the savoury soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the brain balls. The batter is delicate and loosely bound, so it can break apart if boiled too hard. Gentle simmering keeps the balls intact while they cook through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lemon, flour, butter, sherry, wine, walnut):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lemon, flour, butter, sherry, wine, walnut. 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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