Skip to main content
Main

Mock Terrapin Soup

A soup made from calf liver, eggs, butter, flour, and sherry, served with egg yolk balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the calf’s liver in cold water.

  2. Parboil the liver in warm water.

  3. Chop the liver very fine.

  4. Return the chopped liver to the same water.

Make the soup

  1. Season the soup with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and mustard.

  2. Mix the flour smooth in the butter.

  3. Stir the butter‑flour mixture into the soup.

  4. Let the soup boil for 20 minutes.

Make the balls and serve

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard‑boiled eggs.

  2. Mix the mashed yolks with the raw egg yolk, sweet oil, and enough flour to bind.

  3. Form the mixture into round balls the size of a small nutmeg, flattened at one end.

  4. Drop the balls into boiling water.

  5. Let the balls stand for 10 minutes off the heat.

  6. Skim the balls out into a tureen.

  7. Add sherry to the soup.

  8. Pour the soup over the 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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calf’s liver
Forms the body of the soup, breaking down into a rich, thick texture when chopped and simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms a smooth thickening base for the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup and binds the egg-yolk mixture into shapeable balls.
Egg yolks
Add richness and bind the balls, helping them hold their shape when cooked.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a touch of acidity and sweetness at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Let the balls stand off the heat. Egg-yolk balls cooked in boiling water can toughen or break apart if held at a hard boil. Standing them off the heat for 10 minutes lets them set gently and firm up while staying tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pepper, mustard, flour, butter, egg, sherry):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, mustard, flour, butter, egg, sherry. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes