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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf head, veal, beef, vegetables, lobster, oysters, Madeira, and mushrooms, simmered in a seasoned broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 calf's head

  1. Wash the calf's head and boil it for an hour in 6 quarts of water.

  2. Cut the meat into squares while still warm.

Make the broth

  1. In a stewpan, combine the knuckle of veal and 6 lb of beef with 2 carrots, 2 turnips, 2 onions, and 2 heads of celery.

  2. Stew gently for 4 hours in 3 quarts of the broth from the calf's head.

Season and finish

  1. Strain the broth into a large jar and add the squares of calf's head, white pepper, mace, salt, and anchovies.

  2. Stew in the oven for 2 hours, then transfer to a stewpan with the remaining calf's head broth.

  3. Add lobster meat, oysters, Madeira, and mushrooms or mushroom ketchup.

  4. Let it simmer for 30 minutes, then 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. 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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 gelatinous body and texture to the soup once simmered.
Veal
Adds rich meaty flavour and gelatin to the long-stewed broth.
Beef
Deepens the broth's savoury flavour during the long, gentle stew.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury seafood flavour to the finished soup.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stew gently, without a rolling boil. Gentle heat over several hours lets collagen in the head and veal break down into gelatin and keeps the broth clear. A hard boil makes it cloudy and can toughen the meat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, carrot, turnip, celery, onion, mace):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, carrot, turnip, celery, onion, mace. 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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