Skip to main content
Main

Mock Turtle Soup

A soup made from calf's head, beef broth, butter, shallots, flour, white wine, herbs, spices, and served with force meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head and broth

  1. Parboil the divided calf's head and cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Break the bones and boil them in beef broth.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, fry the shallots in butter, then add flour to thicken and stir.

  2. Skim the mixture while it boils, then add the white wine.

  3. Let it simmer until the meat is tender.

  4. Add chives, parsley, basil, salt, cayenne, soy sauce, and mushroom ketchup to taste, and boil for ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Squeeze lemon juice into a tureen, pour the soup over it, and serve with force meat balls.

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. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head
Provides the meat and gelatinous body of the soup as it cooks tender.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the bones and meat.
Butter
Fat that softens the shallots and carries their flavour into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it has a fuller, smoother body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the simmering broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the mixture while it boils. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise during boiling, keeping the soup clear and preventing a greasy or cloudy texture.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, shallot, flour, white wine, chive, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, shallot, flour, white wine, chive, parsley. 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 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes