Name: Mock-turtle
Ingredients: 1 calf's head with skin; veal broth; beef broth

Why it works: Veal and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,784 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Mock-turtle

Ingredients

1 calf's head with skin
veal broth
beef broth

Directions

Prepare the head

Order a calf's head with the skin on and cut it in half.
Clean the head thoroughly and half boil it.
Remove all the meat in square pieces.

Make the broth

Break the bones of the head and boil them in veal and beef broth to enhance the richness.

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.

Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 meat, skin and bones that give the soup its body and gelatin.
Veal broth: Adds a savory, meaty base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Beef broth: Deepens the savory flavor and richness of the liquid.

“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.