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Mock Turtle Soup

A savory soup made from calf head, vegetables, herbs, and seasonings, finished with butter, flour, and optional egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Place the calf's head in cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the head, take out the white part and tongue, and cut them into ½-inch squares; set aside.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter until browned, then fry the sliced vegetables until browned.

  2. Add the flour, the stock from boiling the head, and the bones of the head.

  3. Include the herbs, peppercorns, and Liebig's Extract of Meat.

  4. Simmer the mixture for 2 hours.

  5. Strain the soup through a sieve, then add the reserved pieces of the head and tongue, lemon juice, and salt to taste.

  6. Optionally, add 12 hard-boiled egg yolks and boil for an additional 20 minutes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 gelatin and meaty body that gives the soup its rich texture and flavour.
Butter
Browning in fat builds a deeper, roasted flavour in the vegetables before liquid is added.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup has a fuller body.
Onion
Browned with the carrot and celery, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock.
Liebig's extract of meat
Concentrated meat flavour that deepens the savouriness of the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy broth.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and vegetables. Browning builds roasted, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, but burnt butter or vegetables turn bitter and can taint the whole soup, so heat should be watched closely.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, meat, lemon, turnip, celery, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, meat, lemon, turnip, celery, butter. 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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