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Mock Turtle Soup

A hearty soup made with black beans, salt pork, veal, vegetables, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and cloves, served with eggs and veal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mock Turtle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the black beans and soak them in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a soup kettle.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add 5 quarts of cold water, salt pork, and lean veal to the kettle.

  2. Grate the turnip, carrot, and onions, then add them to the kettle.

  3. Cook the mixture on low heat for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. Half an hour before serving, add salt, pepper, and ground cloves to taste.

  5. Strain the soup through a colander.

Serve

  1. Place the sliced hard-boiled eggs and shredded veal in a tureen.

  2. Heat the soup thoroughly and pour it over the eggs and veal in the tureen.

  3. Serve with sliced lemon if desired.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Lean veal
Adds meaty flavor and savory depth to the stock during slow cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness that carries flavor through the long simmer.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook down into the broth.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add texture and mild richness as a garnish floating in the soup.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture on low heat for 3 to 4 hours. Gentle, low heat lets the beans and veal soften and release flavor slowly while keeping the broth clear. Boiling hard can break the beans apart and cloud the soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, veal, turnip, carrot, onion, pepper):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, veal, turnip, carrot, onion, pepper. 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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