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Mock Turtle

A veal-based soup with tongue, onions, spices, anchovies, force-meat balls, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scald and wash the calf's head.

  2. Boil it for 30 minutes, then skin it and remove the tongue.

Make the soup

  1. In strong veal gravy, add the tongue, skin, onions, cloves, mace, nutmeg, herbs, and anchovies.

  2. Stew until tender, then remove the meat and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

  3. Strain the liquid, melt butter in a stewpan, and stir in flour until smooth.

  4. Add the strained liquid and white wine, season well, and include force-meat balls and yolks of eggs.

  5. Stir in lemon juice and let it stew gently for 1 hour. If too thick, add broth.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat and skin that give the soup its body.
Butter
Enriches the soup and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the butter and strained liquid into a smooth, body-rich base.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stewed liquid.
Yolks of eggs
Add richness and help bind and thicken the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until smooth. Lumps form if flour is added to butter unevenly or the liquid is added too fast. Stirring the flour in smoothly to make a roux lets it thicken the liquid evenly without clumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, white wine, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, white wine, lemon. 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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