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Soup

Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with ox foot, beef bones, gammon, vegetables, herbs, spices, and a butter‑flour roux, finished with lemon and Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 30 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Bring 7 quarts of cold water to a boil in a large pot. Skim off any foam from the boiling water.

  2. Add the ox foot to the pot.

  3. Simmer gently for 6 hours, skimming frequently.

  4. Remove the foot from the pot. Cut the meat into 1‑inch pieces. Dredge the meat pieces with flour.

  5. Return the bones and trimmings to the pot.

  6. Boil for another hour.

Thicken and season

  1. In a separate bowl, knead the butter with 5 tablespoons of flour until slightly browned. Add cayenne, mustard powder, white pepper, and coarse sea salt to the butter mixture.

  2. Stir the butter‑flour mixture into the soup.

  3. Add soy sauce and anchovy sauce to the soup.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cut meat from the foot to the strained soup. Add lemon juice to the strained soup.

  2. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the Madeira or sherry.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox foot
Releases gelatin and body into the stock, giving the soup its rich, silky texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup as a browned butter roux, giving it body and a nutty depth.
Butter
Carries the flour for the roux and adds richness and fat to the finished soup.
Madeira or sherry
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished soup just before serving.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy flavour of the stock.

The step that matters

Strain before adding the meat and lemon. Straining removes the bones, trimmings and aromatics so the soup is clear and smooth. Adding the lemon juice after straining keeps its bright acidity fresh and prevents the meat from being overcooked while the soup simmers.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, sage, laurel):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, sage, laurel. 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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