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Soup

Mock Mock Turtle

A soup of bacon or ham, beef, cow‑heel, carrot rind, herbs, and spices simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mock Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line the bottom of a 5‑pint stew‑pan with bacon or ham.

  2. Add beef, cow‑heel, carrot rind, lemon‑thyme, winter savory, parsley, basil, eschalots, and onion with cloves.

Simmer

  1. Pour in cold water, cover, and set on low heat to boil gently for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover, watch for browning, then fill the pan with boiling water.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours, ensuring meat is just tender.

  4. Cut meat into bite‑sized pieces and add to the soup.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat flavour, and its connective tissue softens into tender meat during slow simmering.
Cow-heel
Its gelatin adds body and a silky mouthfeel to the broth.
Bacon or ham
Adds savoury, smoky fat and salty depth to the stock.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aroma as it cooks down into the broth.
Eschalots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that rounds out the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. Boiling hard toughens meat and clouds the broth. A low, steady simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender while the soup stays clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beef, carrot, lemon, thyme, parsley, basil):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, carrot, lemon, thyme, parsley, basil. 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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