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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, cow-heels, gravy, spices, leeks, lemon, Madeira wine, and fried force-meat and egg balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut veal or tripe into small pieces and fry until pale brown.

  2. Remove meat from cow-heels and cut into moderate-sized pieces.

  3. Combine veal, cow-heels, weak gravy, butter, anchovies, salt, Cayenne pepper, mace, cloves, leeks, lemon thyme, parsley, and lemon peel in a pot. Chop all ingredients very fine and add to the pot.

Stew and finish

  1. Let the mixture stew gently for 3 hours.

  2. Squeeze in the juice of 3 lemons and add Madeira wine; stew for another hour.

  3. Skim off the fat and add fried force-meat balls 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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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

Veal or tripe
Provides the main meat and body, becoming tender during long gentle stewing.
Cow-heels
Adds gelatin, which gives the soup a rich, silky body as it stews.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, long-cooked broth.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour during the final hour of stewing.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury depth that rounds out the broth's flavour.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat. Fat rises and sets on the surface as the broth cools, and leaving it in makes the soup greasy; skimming before adding the balls keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, pepper, clove, leek, lemon, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, pepper, clove, leek, lemon, thyme. 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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