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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, beef, vegetables, and spices, simmered in a buttered stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Remove the brains from the calf's head and set aside.

  2. Wash the head in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Place the head in a stewpan with 2 gallons of cold water and boil gently for 1 hour, skimming off the scum.

  4. Remove the head and let it cool slightly, then cut the meat into 1‑inch square pieces.

  5. Keep the skin with the fat attached and cut the tongue into similar pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a stockpot, melt 2 oz. of butter and sauté the sliced onions until brown.

  2. Add 5 lb. of coarse lean beef and pour in half of the broth from boiling the head.

  3. Boil and remove any scum, then add the diced carrots, turnips, chopped celery, cloves, eschalots, and herbs.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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, skin and fat that give the soup its body and rich texture.
Coarse lean beef
Adds meaty flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Browned in butter, they build a deep, sweet base for the soup.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onions and adds richness.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum while boiling the head. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise during boiling. Removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, so it must be skimmed as it forms rather than left to cook back in.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, beef, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, beef, pepper. 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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