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Soup

Mock Turtle

A hearty soup made with calf head, veal and beef broth, enriched with butter, flour, Madeira wine, herbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 589 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Cut the calf's head in half and clean it well.

  2. Half boil the head, then remove the meat in square pieces.

  3. Break the bones and boil them in veal and beef broth for richness.

Make the soup

  1. Fry shallots in butter, then add flour to thicken the gravy.

  2. Stir the thickened gravy into the broth and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the broth carefully, then add the head and simmer until the meat is tender.

  4. Ten minutes before serving, add basil, tarragon, chives, parsley, Cayenne, pepper, and salt to taste.

  5. Add mushroom ketchup and soy sauce, then squeeze in lemon juice 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. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Basil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Basil + chivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + chivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 meat and gelatinous texture that give the soup its body.
Butter
Fat that cooks the shallots and flour into a smooth base for the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the broth becomes body-rich rather than watery.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth that rounds out the savoury broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and balances its flavour.
Veal broth
Forms the savoury liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the broth carefully. Skimming removes fat and surface impurities that would otherwise cloud the soup and make it greasy before the head simmers until tender.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, butter, flour, madeira wine, tarragon, chive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, butter, flour, madeira wine, tarragon, chive. 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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