Skip to main content
Main

Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf head meat, butter, flour, onion, herbs, broth, wine, lemon, egg yolks, and optional ham or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Split the scalded calf's head down the middle.

  2. Remove the brains.

  3. Boil the head for 15 minutes.

  4. Place it in cold water.

  5. Remove any scum or blood.

  6. Remove the meat from the bones in large pieces.

  7. Cut into 1-inch squares.

Make the soup

  1. In a large, dry, tinned copper stewpan, melt the butter over a clear fire.

  2. Gradually mix in the flour.

  3. Stir quickly until it turns a light brown.

  4. Add the meat, chopped herbs, and onion to the pan.

  5. Strain the broth from the scalded head.

  6. Mix it with the meat and herbs until covered.

  7. Cook over heat, stirring until it boils.

  8. Remove any scum or fat.

  9. Add pepper, salt, and cayenne pepper to taste.

  10. Let it simmer gently for 30 minutes or until tender.

  11. Stir in the Madeira wine.

  12. Boil for 5 minutes, adjusting seasoning as needed.

  13. Add the lemon juice just before serving.

  14. Include the yolks of hard-boiled eggs for improvement.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted with flour to form a browned roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Browned with the butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Calves head
Provides the meat and gelatinous body that give the soup its substance.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and aromatic richness to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy broth.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body to the soup as a finishing addition.

The step that matters

Stir the roux until light brown. Flour and butter must be stirred constantly over steady heat. Uneven heat or stopping early leaves raw flour taste or scorching, which affects the soup's flavor and thickening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, madeira wine, lemon, egg, ham):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, madeira wine, lemon, egg, ham. 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 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes