Skip to main content
Soup

Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with cream, Worcestershire sauce, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Clean the calf's head and place it in a large pot.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, turnip, and bouquet garni.

  3. Cover with water and simmer for several hours until tender.

  4. Remove the head, strain the broth, and chop the meat finely.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the meat to the broth, add lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stir in cream, Worcestershire sauce, and sherry before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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 body that give the soup its rich texture.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the broth's flavour and giving it a rounder body.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and balances its fattiness.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of sweetness and acidity to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmering the calf's head until tender. The head must cook long enough for collagen and connective tissue to break down into gelatin, which gives the broth body and makes the meat tender. Stopping early leaves it tough and the broth thin.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, cream, sauce, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, cream, sauce, 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.

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes