Skip to main content
Main

Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made from calf's head, vegetables, herbs, and force‑meat balls, finished with sherry and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,021 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Boil the calf's head until the meat leaves the bones.

  2. Leave the head in the seasoned soup overnight.

  3. Remove the head, scrape off the fat, and take out the bones.

Make the soup

  1. Put the jellied stock over the fire with the bones, chopped ears, grated carrot, sliced onion, soup herbs, allspice, paprika, and salt, then boil for one hour.

  2. Remove the stock from heat and strain it.

  3. Thicken the strained stock with butter rolled in browned flour.

  4. Add the kitchen bouquet.

  5. Drop in diced tongue and cheek.

  6. Stir in sherry and lemon juice.

Finish and bake

  1. Pour the soup over force-meat balls in a hot tureen.

  2. Rub the brains into a paste with the yolk of a hard-boiled egg and a little browned flour.

  3. Bake the mixture until crusted.

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. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

  2. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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's head
Supplies the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and jellied richness.
Browned flour
Its starch thickens the hot stock and gives a slightly nutty, toasted flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, smooth mouthfeel to the thickened soup.
Kitchen bouquet
A browning seasoning that deepens the soup's colour and adds savoury depth.
Sherry
Adds wine aroma and a sweet-dry depth that rounds out the rich stock.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy stock and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the strained stock with butter rolled in browned flour. Flour thickens only when its starch is dispersed in hot liquid and swells. Coating the butter in flour and stirring it into the stock keeps the thickening smooth and free of lumps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, allspice, butter, flour, sherry, meat):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, allspice, butter, flour, sherry, meat. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes