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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, ham, veal stock, seasonings, ketchups, soy sauce, port wine, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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

Prepare the head

  1. Scald the calf's head with the skin on, then saw it open and remove the brains.

  2. Tie the head in a clean cloth and boil for about 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the head, strip the meat from the bones, and cut it into small square pieces.

  4. Soak the meat in cold water to keep it white, then drain and place it in a soup pot.

Make the soup

  1. Cover the meat with veal stock and boil gently until tender.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and add a few spoons of stock to prevent burning.

  3. Add the finely chopped ham and cook until fragrant.

  4. Combine the ham mixture with the meat, then add the seasonings, ketchups, soy sauce, port wine, and mustard.

  5. Boil everything together before serving.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 body of meat and gelatin that gives the soup its rich texture.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the ham and aromatics and adds richness to the soup.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the butter base before it joins the soup.
Veal stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the meat tender and forms the body of the soup.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the finished soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the head gently until tender. Boiling too hard breaks up the meat and makes the broth cloudy, while too little heat leaves the collagen in the head unconverted, so the meat stays tough and the soup lacks body.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, veal, meat, pepper, allspice, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, veal, meat, pepper, allspice, clove. 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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