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Soup

Mock-Turtle Soup

A soup made from cow heels, veal, herbs, and lemon juice, served with force-meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,580 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mock-Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bake the cow heels with herbs until tender.

  2. Add pieces of boiled cow heels and veal to the soup.

Serve

  1. Squeeze a little lemon juice into the tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the lemon juice.

  3. 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. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cow heels
Provide gelatin that gives the soup its body and a rich, thick mouthfeel.
Veal
Adds meaty flavour and tender pieces to the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich soup and gives it its tangy character.

The step that matters

Baking the cow heels until tender. Cow heels are rich in collagen, which must break down slowly over long cooking to release gelatin. Stopping early leaves the soup thin and the meat tough.

“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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