Skip to main content
Main

Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made with peeled meat, butter, sage, flour, lemon, herbs, spices, sherry, and force‑meat balls, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Weigh 6 ounces of peeled meat and fry in a clean frying pan with 2 ounces of butter until light brown.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of chopped sage and stir in 6 ounces of flour, letting it brown slightly.

  3. Gradually add some soup to liquify the mixture, stirring until it boils.

  4. Mix this with the rest of the soup in a stew pan, adding the lemon peel, basil, marjoram, ground pepper, mace, and salt to taste.

Simmer and strain

  1. Let the soup simmer slowly for 1.5 hours.

  2. Strain the soup through a sieve without rubbing.

  3. Return the soup to a clean stew pan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the meat pieces, tongue, sherry, and strained lemon juice.

  2. Simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 10 minutes before serving.

  3. Add force-meat balls and diced egg yolks.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Lemon + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Browned first to build savoury flavour for the soup base.
Butter
Fat that carries the frying and browns the meat.
Flour
Browned and stirred in to thicken the soup base.
Sherry or ginger wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, crumbly texture as a garnish-like finish.

The step that matters

Straining without rubbing. Pressing solids through the sieve pushes fine particles and fat into the soup, which can cloud it and make it greasy. Letting liquid drip through keeps the soup clearer.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, sage, flour, lemon, marjoram, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, sage, flour, lemon, marjoram, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes