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Invalid Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from a calf's foot, ham, vegetables, and stock, thickened with cornflour and finished with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Invalid Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Clean and scald the calf's foot.

  2. Place the calf's foot in a pan with the onion, ham, water, carrot, thyme, parsley, turnip, and clove.

  3. Bring the contents to a boil, then remove any scum.

  4. Simmer for four hours with the cover on.

  5. Strain the stock.

  6. Place the foot on a dish.

  7. Once the stock is cold, remove the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Cut the meat from the foot into small pieces.

  2. Return the meat to the stock.

  3. Simmer gently for one hour.

  4. Mix the cornflour with two tablespoons of cold stock or water until smooth.

  5. Add the cornflour mixture to the soup.

  6. Bring to a boil while stirring continuously.

  7. Add the sherry and a few drops of browning just before serving.

  8. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's foot
Provides gelatin and body, giving the stock a rich, full texture.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly glossy soup as it boils.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a sweet, nutty aroma at the end of cooking.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Bringing the cornflour mixture to a boil while stirring. Cornflour must be mixed smooth in cold liquid first and stirred constantly as it heats; otherwise it clumps and the soup stays lumpy. Starch thickens only once it reaches a boil, so the soup needs to come fully up to temperature for it to set properly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, thyme, parsley, turnip, clove, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, thyme, parsley, turnip, clove, sherry. 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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