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Mock Turtle

A mock turtle made from calf head, tongue, feet, and brains, served in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Clean the head and feet of the calf, scald off the hair in boiling water, and scrape it well.

  2. Split the head open, remove the brains, and set them aside.

  3. Place the head in a soup kettle with 5 quarts of water and boil gently until the meat separates from the bone.

  4. If using half the head for a side dish, remove it before fully cooked, along with the tongue.

  5. Let the other half simmer longer, then remove the skin and meat, reducing the broth to about 2 quarts.

  6. Strain the broth through a thick wet cloth and set it aside to cool.

  7. Cut the meat into half-inch square slices and set aside.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the feet down into a jelly, strain, and let cool to remove fat and scum.

Make the brain balls

  1. Take the boiled brains, set aside half for sauce, and mix the other half with bread crumbs, egg yolks, black pepper, and salt.

  2. Bind the mixture with a little flour, form into marble-sized balls, and fry in hot ghee until golden brown.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 head
Provides the meat and gelatin-rich broth that forms the base of the dish.
Calf feet
Boiled down into a jelly that adds body and gelatin to the dish.
Egg yolks
Bind the brain mixture and add richness to the fried balls.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the brain mixture body so it holds its shape.
Flour
Helps bind the brain mixture so the balls hold together when frying.

The step that matters

Fry the brain balls in hot ghee. The mixture is soft and bound only lightly, so it can fall apart or absorb too much fat if the ghee is not hot enough. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it while keeping the inside tender.

“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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