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Soup

For Turtle, Mock Turtle, &C.

A soup made with veal, udder, butter, breadcrumbs, milk, parsley, shallot, and egg yolks, formed into small balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

For Turtle, Mock Turtle, &C.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Pound the veal in a mortar.

  2. Rub it through a sieve with the udder and butter.

  3. Moisten the bread crumbs with milk or consommé.

  4. Add chopped parsley and shallot, and mix until smooth.

  5. Sieve the mixture and let it cool.

Season and shape

  1. Pound and mix with hard-boiled egg yolks, seasoning with salt, pepper, and curry or cayenne.

  2. Add raw egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Form into small balls and add to the soup a few minutes 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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the meat balls, giving them substance and a tender bite once pounded.
Udder
Adds richness and a gelatinous body to the meat mixture as it is rubbed through the sieve.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives the forcemeat a smooth, moist texture and rich flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk or consommé and bind the mixture, keeping the balls moist and light.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape when cooked in the soup.

The step that matters

Forming and adding the balls. The mixture must be smooth and well bound before shaping. Raw egg yolks set when heated, so the balls can firm up or crumble if the mixture is uneven. Adding them only a few minutes before serving keeps them tender and prevents overcooking.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper. 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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