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Mock Turtle Soup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the calf's head by cleaning it thoroughly.

  2. In a large pot, boil the calf's head with water or stock, herbs, butter, mushrooms, and onions until tender.

  3. Remove the head and strain the broth.

  4. Add flour, tomato pulp, currant jelly, and coarse sea salt to the broth.

  5. Bring to a boil, then simmer for an additional ten 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. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, onion, flour, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, onion, flour, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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