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Mock Turtle Soup

A broth made from calf's head or veal shanks, spices, vegetables, thickened with flour, sweetened with burnt sugar, finished with eggs and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

  1. In a large pot, combine 2 gallons of water, the calf's head or veal shanks, cloves, allspice, pepper, salt, onions, tomatoes, and carrots.

  2. Cook until the meat is tender, then remove it, chop it finely, and return it to the pot.

  3. If needed, thicken the soup with a little browned flour.

Color and serve

  1. To enhance the color, burn ½ cup of sugar in a pan, mix it with 1 pint of boiling water, and pour it into the soup.

  2. Add the hard-boiled eggs and chopped lemon, stir well, 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's head or veal shanks
Provides the meat and gelatin that give the soup its body and rich mouthfeel.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, deeper flavor when used.
Sugar
Caramelized in a pan, it deepens the soup's color and adds a slight sweetness.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, meaty broth.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Burning the sugar. Sugar darkens and turns bitter if it burns too far, so it should be taken to a deep amber and removed from heat before the boiling water is added. Adding the water carefully prevents the hot syrup from splattering.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, clove, allspice, pepper, tomato, carrot, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, clove, allspice, pepper, tomato, carrot, 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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