Skip to main content
Main

Mock Terrapin

A dish of calf's liver sautéed with mustard, cayenne, eggs, butter, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and pepper 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Season the liver with coarse sea salt.

  2. Fry the seasoned liver until brown.

  3. Cut the liver into small pieces.

  4. Dredge the pieces in flour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pot, combine the mustard, cayenne pepper, water, eggs, and butter.

  2. Add the liver to the pot.

  3. Let the mixture boil for 1–2 minutes.

  4. Stir in the wine.

  5. 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 main body of the dish and browns during frying for savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, thickened texture to the sauce as they are mixed in.
Flour
Dusts the liver pieces so they brown lightly and help thicken the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the liver until brown. Browning the liver creates savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Liver overcooked past browning becomes dry and grainy, so watch colour and texture closely.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, wine, pepper, egg, 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.

More mock terrapin recipes

Soup 8 See all 44 →

You might also like

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