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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with calf’s head, veal knuckle, vegetables, and small forcemeat balls, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Bone the calf’s head and blanch it for 10 minutes.

  2. Butter a stock pot.

  3. Add the chopped ham, knuckle of veal, and calf’s head to the pot.

  4. Include the carrots, turnip, leek, eschalots, bouquet garni, and salt.

  5. Simmer gently in 3 quarts of water for about 3 hours until the head is tender.

Thicken and finish

  1. Remove the head, let it cool, and cut it into neat squares.

  2. Strain the stock, reducing it to 2 quarts.

  3. Add 1 ounce of butter and 2 ounces of flour to thicken the stock.

  4. Bring to a boil and remove any scum.

  5. Stir in the sherry, lemon juice, and the cut pieces of the head.

  6. Add the small forcemeat balls, being careful not to boil the soup afterward.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf’s head
Provides gelatinous body and texture once simmered until tender.
Knuckle of veal
Adds gelatin and savory depth to the stock during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and forms the base of the flour thickener.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that brightens the rich stock.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the stock and head.

The step that matters

Do not boil the soup after adding the forcemeat balls. Boiling makes the delicate forcemeat balls tough and crumbly and can break them apart, while gentle heat keeps them tender and intact.

“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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