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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made with veal udder or suet, egg yolks, pickled pork, and various seasonings, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Combine veal udder or suet, egg yolks, salt, pepper, and enough flour to bind into balls.

  2. Fry the balls until rich brown.

Make the soup base

  1. In a pot, brown stock with roux.

  2. Add jelly from feet, mushroom ketchup, anchovy sauce, claret or white wine, mace, nutmeg, black pepper, and sweet basil.

  3. Bring to a boil with slices of the head.

  4. Soak and wash pickled pork.

  5. Add the pickled pork to a soup kettle with onions, lemon thyme, sweet basil, celery, and mace.

  6. Add 6-7 quarts of water and boil gently until meat is tender.

  7. Remove meat from bones, chop, and return bones to the pot to simmer longer.

  8. Cool the soup, remove fat, and strain.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the force meat balls in a soup tureen, add lime juice, and pour the soup over them.

  2. Add wine and sauces, then mix in force meat and egg balls.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal udder or suet
Forms the rich, meaty body of the forcemeat balls.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and help it hold its shape when fried.
Flour
Absorbs moisture so the forcemeat balls hold together.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the soup.
Claret or white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the soup.
Pickled pork
Lends salty, cured meat flavour to the soup base.

The step that matters

Cool the soup, remove fat, and strain. Fat rises and sets as the soup cools, so chilling lets it be lifted off cleanly. Straining then removes solids, leaving a clear, smooth broth.

“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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