Skip to main content
Main

Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, pickled pork, herbs, and spices, thickened with flour and butter.

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

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Place the cleaned calf's head in a soup pot.

  2. Add the soaked pickled pork, sweet herbs, onions, celery, truffles or morels, mace, and pepper.

  3. Fill the pot with water, leaving some space at the top, and boil slowly until the meat is tender.

  4. Remove the meat, cut it into square pieces, and break the bones, returning them to the pot.

  5. Let the soup simmer for 4 to 5 hours, then cool it quickly and remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and thicken it with flour and butter.

  2. Add Harvey's sauce, sherry or Madeira, and lemon juice.

  3. Stir in the meat from the head and pork, and add egg balls or force-meat if desired.

  4. Warm the soup and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Pork + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 body and rich flavour of the soup stock.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup together with the butter into a smooth body.
Butter
Enriches the thickened soup and adds richness with the flour.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Pickled pork
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy broth.

The step that matters

Cooling and removing the fat before thickening. Rapid cooling lets fat rise and set on top so it can be removed cleanly. Leftover fat would make the finished soup greasy and heavy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, celery, truffle, pepper, sauce, sherry. 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 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes