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Mock Turtle Soup

A savory soup made with calf head, veal knuckle, ham, vegetables, and small forcemeat balls, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Bone the calf's head and blanch it in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Butter a stock pot.

  3. Add the chopped ham, knuckle of veal, and calf's head to the pot.

  4. Include the carrots, turnip, leek, eschalots, bouquet garni, and salt.

  5. Simmer gently in 3 quarts of water for about 3 hours until the head is tender.

  6. Remove the head, let it cool, and cut it into neat squares.

  7. Strain the stock, reducing it to 2 quarts.

Thicken and finish

  1. Add 1 ounce of butter and 2 ounces of flour to thicken the stock.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any scum.

  3. Stir in the sherry, lemon juice, and the cut pieces of head.

  4. Add the small forcemeat balls, being careful not to boil the soup afterward.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Leek + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 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 gelatinous meat and body that gives the soup its rich, thick texture.
Knuckle of veal
Releases collagen and flavor into the stock during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the stock as it cooks with butter, giving the soup body.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a sweet, nutty acidity to the finished soup.
Lean ham
Contributes savory, salty flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Do not boil the soup after adding the forcemeat balls. Boiling toughens and can break apart the delicate forcemeat balls, and vigorous boiling can also make the thickened stock cloudy or cause it to scorch on the bottom.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, veal, turnip, leek, flour, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, veal, turnip, leek, 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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