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Mock Turtle Soup

A bean-based soup with veal, spices, lemon, and hard-boiled eggs, served in a tureen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the turtle soup beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a pot with fresh water.

  3. Boil the beans for one hour.

Make the soup

  1. Add the veal, salt, pepper, cloves, allspice, and marjoram to the pot.

  2. Continue boiling until the beans are very soft.

  3. Mash the beans through a colander, discarding skins and spices.

  4. Return the mashed beans to the pot to keep hot.

  5. Cut the veal into small pieces, about the size of a filbert.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, layer the veal pieces, lemon slices, and hard-boiled egg slices.

  2. Pour the boiling soup over the ingredients in the tureen and serve.

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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle soup beans
Break down into a thick purée that gives the soup its body.
Veal
Supplies meaty flavour and chewy texture in the finished soup.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, mild richness to the served bowl.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that lifts the rich, savoury broth.

The step that matters

Mash the beans through a colander. Pressing the fully softened beans through a colander separates the skins and whole spices from the purée. Beans that are not soft enough will not pass through cleanly and leave the soup grainy.

Swap the marjoram

The recipe marks marjoram as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, veal, pepper, clove, allspice, lemon, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Marjoramthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, veal, pepper, clove, allspice, lemon, egg. 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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