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Mock Turtle Soup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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

  1. Scald the hair off the calf's head without skimming it.

  2. Boil the head for 30 minutes, then cut it into small square pieces.

  3. In a stew-pan, combine the pieces with strong broth made from the beef, veal, turnips, carrots, onions, and celery.

  4. Add sweet herbs, sage, and ham or anchovies, and boil until the head is tender.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Season the soup with salt, white pepper, Cayenne pepper, Madeira wine, and lemon juice.

  7. Thicken the soup with flour and butter.

  8. Add a cleaned part of the head, forced-meat balls, and egg balls.

  9. Boil for a few minutes and 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. Turnip + carrottop 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. Celery + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 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

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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