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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from veal knuckle, cow heels, onions, cloves, spices, and wine, served with eggs, meatballs, lemon juice, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Braise the meat

  1. Combine the knuckle of veal, cow heels, onions, cloves, pepper, allspice, mace, and sweet herbs in a pan.

  2. Cover the pan with water.

  3. Tie a thick paper over the pan.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for three hours.

  5. Once cooled, remove the fat.

Prepare and finish

  1. Cut the meat and heels into 1.5‑inch square pieces.

  2. Remove bones and coarse parts.

  3. Warm the meat with walnut ketchup, mushroom ketchup, white wine, and meat jelly.

  4. Adjust seasoning as needed.

  5. Serve with hard-boiled eggs, force‑meat balls, lemon juice, and soy sauce.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Gives body and rich savoury flavour to the broth as it slowly cooks.
Cow heels
Release gelatin during long cooking, giving the soup its body and jelly-like richness.
Walnut ketchup
Adds deep, savoury, slightly tangy flavour that rounds out the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated umami and earthy depth to the finished soup.
Dry white wine
Adds acidity and brightness that lifts the rich meat flavours.

The step that matters

Covering the pan and baking gently for three hours. Long, low, covered cooking lets collagen in the veal and heels slowly convert to gelatin without boiling away the liquid. A hard boil would make the broth cloudy and greasy and could toughen the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, clove, pepper, allspice, mace, walnut, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, clove, pepper, allspice, mace, walnut, ketchup. 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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