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Soup

For Turtle, Mock Turtle, or Made Dishes

A savory soup made with veal, udder, butter, bread crumbs, milk, parsley, shallot, egg yolks, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

For Turtle, Mock Turtle, or Made Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Pound the veal in a marble mortar.

  2. Rub it through a sieve with the udder and butter.

  3. In a stew-pan, moisten the bread crumbs with milk.

  4. Add chopped parsley and shallot, and mix until smooth.

  5. Sieve the mixture and let it cool.

  6. Pound and mix with the hard-boiled egg yolks.

  7. Season with salt, pepper, and curry powder or cayenne.

  8. Add the raw egg yolks and mix well.

Serve

  1. Form small balls and add them to the soup ten minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the forcemeat balls, giving them a tender, meaty bulk.
Udder
Adds richness and a gelatinous texture that helps the balls hold together.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and add body, helping the mixture hold its shape.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly when cooked in the soup.

The step that matters

Form small balls and add them to the soup ten minutes before serving. The forcemeat is delicate and must be firm enough to hold its shape. Adding it at the end keeps it from breaking down during long simmering, while still cooking through.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper. 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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