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Soup

Old-fashioned Mock Turtle

A hearty soup made from calf's head, beef neck, ham, vegetables, and spices, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Old-fashioned Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and stock

  1. Remove the brain from the calf's head, wash, and soak it well.

  2. In a large pot, combine the head with 9 quarts of cold water and bring to a gentle boil.

  3. Skim the surface clean and boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Remove the head and add 8 pounds of lightly browned neck of beef, ham, onions, celery, carrots, herbs, lemon rind, peppercorns, and salt to the pot.

  5. Stew gently for 6-7 hours, then strain the stock and cool it to solidify the fat on top.

  6. Remove the skin and fat from the head, cutting it into strips or dice.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a large soup pot, combine 4-5 quarts of stock with 4 ounces of butter and 4 ounces of flour to thicken.

  2. Add mace and cayenne pepper, adjusting to taste.

  3. Pour in 1/2 pint of sherry and stir until simmering for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Add the head back to the pot and stew gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1.5 hours, stirring often.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides gelatin and body, giving the soup its rich, thick texture as it stews.
Neck of beef
Adds deep meaty flavour and gelatin to the stock during long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Enriches the thickened stock and adds rich, savoury fat to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, velvety body when cooked with butter.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a light acidic sweetness to the finished soup.
Onions
Build sweet, savoury aromatic base flavour as they stew in the stock.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and stock with steady stirring and simmering, or it stays lumpy and tastes raw. Gentle heat lets the starch swell evenly for a smooth, glossy body.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, ham, onion, celery, carrot, flour):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, ham, onion, celery, carrot, flour. 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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