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Soup

Mock Turtle or Calf’s Head Soup

A soup made from calf's head, broth, herbs, and egg balls, finished with lemon juice and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Turtle or Calf’s Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scald the cleaned calf's head in 3 quarts of water until three parts done, then cut it into medium-sized pieces.

  2. Strain the liquid and add it to 3 quarts of veal broth, the bones of the head, and the herbs and spices.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, then strain the liquid again.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken the strained liquid with a mixture of flour and butter.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add it to the pieces of the head.

  3. Add scalded forcemeat and gently boiled egg-balls until tender.

  4. Five minutes before serving, stir in lemon juice and boiling sherry wine.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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 gelatinous meat and body that give the soup its characteristic texture.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid together with the butter, giving the soup body.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the broth and adds richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and balances its fat and savoury flavour.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice and sherry. Adding acid and wine at the end, just before serving, keeps their bright flavour fresh; boiling them for long would dull the aroma and alcohol would cook off unevenly.

“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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