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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup of beef shank, beefsteak balls, hard boiled eggs, and spices, thickened with brown flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Place the beef shank in a large pot with the water and cook gently until nearly time to serve.

Prepare the beefsteak balls

  1. Chop the beefsteak finely and form into balls, seasoning with black pepper, salt, and onions.

  2. Fry the beefsteak balls until browned, then add them to the soup.

Season and finish

  1. Add the thyme, black pepper, cloves, and allspice to the pot.

  2. Chop the hard boiled eggs and stir them into the soup.

  3. Thicken the soup with brown flour and add wine to taste.

  4. Serve very hot.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Gives the soup its body and rich meaty flavor as it cooks slowly in water.
Beefsteak
Forms browned meat balls that add savory depth and texture to the soup.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, mild texture and body to the soup once chopped and stirred in.
Brown flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a fuller, richer consistency.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, meaty broth.

The step that matters

Fry the beefsteak balls until browned. Browning meat creates Maillard reaction flavors that deepen the savory taste of the soup. Pale, underbrowned balls will leave the broth tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, thyme, clove, allspice, egg, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, thyme, clove, allspice, egg, flour. 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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