Skip to main content
Main

Mock Turtle Sour

A stew of calf’s head, ham, veal, herbs, spices, onions, mushrooms, and butter, thickened with flour and seasoned with sugar, cayenne, salt, lemon, and wine.

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

Why it works: Basil and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Blanch the calf’s head to remove the bones, then cut off the ear and tongue, removing the skin from the tongue.

  2. Let all parts cool separately and strain the liquid, adding it to your veal or second stock.

  3. Cut the meat into large square dice, place it in a stewpan with the prepared stock, and stew until tender.

Make the soup base

  1. Strain some of the stock and in another stewpan, fry the ham, veal, basil, marjoram, mace, cloves, bay leaves, onions, and mushroom parings in butter until light brown.

  2. Dry the mixture with flour, then add the strained stock. If too thick, add more stock and let it boil, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  3. Once boiled, strain through a tammy or sieve into the stewpan with the cut pieces of the head and boil together.

Season and finish

  1. Season with sugar, cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, lemon juice, and white wine.

  2. If desired, add force-meat balls and blanched eggs as per previous instructions.

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

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Basil + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Marjoram + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 gives the soup its rich texture.
Butter
Fat that browns the aromatics and vegetables, building savoury flavour for the base.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup gains body and a smoother texture.
Onions
Caramelise during frying, adding sweetness and depth to the base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy flavour of the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the finished seasoning.

The step that matters

Frying the ham, veal and aromatics in butter. Frying until light brown develops savoury, roasted flavours through browning reactions. Stopping too early leaves the base pale and flat, while burning gives bitter notes.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, basil, marjoram, clove, onion, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, basil, marjoram, clove, onion, mushroom. 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 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes