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Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from a calf's head, butter, onion, basil, cayenne, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,294 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Boil the calf's head for 1 hour.

  2. Cut the head into square pieces, avoiding any loose pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter with the chopped onion and basil.

  2. Add flour gradually to thicken the soup.

  3. Pour in 3 quarts of the stock from boiling the head.

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. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + basiltop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,600 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and richness.
Butter
Carries the onion and basil flavour and adds richness to the base.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying all the flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour added all at once clumps and stays lumpy because its starch granules need to be dispersed in fat and liquid before they swell. Adding it slowly, stirring well, lets it thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, basil, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, basil, pepper, flour. 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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