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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head and pickled pork, simmered with herbs, celery, and spices, finished with wine, lemon, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and pork

  1. Soak the calf's head and pickled pork in lukewarm water to remove salt.

  2. Place both in a soup kettle with onions, sweet herbs, celery, pepper, and mace.

  3. Fill the kettle with water.

  4. Boil gently until the meat is tender.

  5. Remove the head and pork.

  6. Separate the meat from the bones.

  7. Return the bones to the soup.

Make the soup

  1. Let the soup stew for several hours.

  2. Cool and remove the fat.

  3. Strain the soup and thicken it.

  4. Add white wine, lemon juice, and Harvey's sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the meat from half the head and the pork into pieces.

  2. Warm them in the soup along with egg-balls and forcemeat.

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

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 and body that give the soup its rich, thick texture.
Pickled pork
Adds savory, salty depth and fat that carry the flavour through the long simmer.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, heavy broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness and sharpens the overall flavour.
Harvey's sauce
Adds concentrated savory, tangy flavour to deepen the soup's taste.
Celery
Contributes aromatic vegetable flavour to the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after cooling. Fat rises and sets on cooled stock, so chilling and skimming it off before adding wine and lemon keeps the soup clean-tasting rather than greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, celery, pepper, white wine, lemon, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, celery, pepper, white wine, lemon, sauce. 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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