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Mock Turtle

A dish of calf's liver seasoned with salt and cayenne, cooked with flour, butter, and sherry, served on toast and topped with hard boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Boil the calf's liver until just done.

  2. Chop the liver finely and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Cream together the flour and butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the seasoned liver and sherry to the pan, stirring gently.

  3. Serve hot on toast, topped with chopped hard boiled egg.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 main body of the dish, giving it a rich, savoury flavour and a soft, spreadable texture.
Flour
Creamed with butter to form a base that helps thicken the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that balance the richness of the liver and butter.
Hard boiled egg
Adds a mild, firm contrast in texture as a topping.

The step that matters

Boil the liver until just done. Liver turns dry, grainy and tough when overcooked, because its proteins tighten and lose moisture quickly. Stopping at just done keeps it tender enough to chop and blend smoothly.

“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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