Name: Cow-heel in Mock Turtle
Ingredients: 2 cow heels; 4 cups water; 2 carrots, chopped; 2 turnips, chopped; 4 large onions, each stuck with a clove; sweet herbs and spices (to taste); 1 cup cider or strong ale; 1 cup homemade hard wine

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 ↓

Cow-heel in Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

Scald the cow heels and place them in a pot with water.
Add carrots, turnips, onions, and sweet herbs and spices.
Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours.
Remove the heels, let them cool, and take off the meat.
Return the bones and any cleaned fish or poultry scraps to the pot.

Finish and serve

Finish the dish by adding cider, ale, or wine.
Serve with farce-balls and eggs.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,233 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + oniontop 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

Cow heels: Provide gelatin and body, giving the stock a rich, full texture as they simmer.
Cider or strong ale: Adds acidity and fruity or malty depth to the finished soup.
Homemade hard wine: Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, clove, cider, wine):

Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, clove, cider, wine. 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.