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A Cheaper Way to Prepare Mock-turtle

A stew made from calf head, ox palates, cow heel, and seasonings, simmered with sherry and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Cheaper Way to Prepare Mock-turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Prepare half a calf's head, removing the skin.

  2. Cut the meat off the calf's head.

  3. Break the bones of the calf's head.

  4. Put the bones in a saucepan with gravy made from beef and veal bones, seasoned with fried onions, herbs, mace, and pepper.

  5. Boil 2–3 ox palates until tender.

  6. Cut the boiled ox palates into small pieces.

  7. Cut the cow heel into pieces.

  8. Add the cow heel pieces to the ox palates.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Brown butter, flour, and onion in a pan.

  2. Pour the gravy into the pan.

  3. Add the meats to the pan.

  4. Stir in ½ pint of sherry, 1 anchovy, 2 tablespoons of walnut ketchup, 2 tablespoons of mushroom ketchup, and chopped herbs.

  5. Stew the mixture until heated through.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned with butter to form a roux that thickens the gravy.
Butter
Fat that is browned with flour to build flavour and begin the thickened base.
Ox palates
Gelatinous meat that becomes tender and adds body to the stew.
Cow heel
Adds gelatin, giving the stew a richer, silkier body as it stews.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture until heated through. Gentle, sustained simmering is needed to tenderise the palates and cow heel and draw gelatin into the sauce; rushing it leaves the meats tough and the sauce thin.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, onion, pepper, butter, flour, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, onion, pepper, butter, flour, sherry. 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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