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Mock Terrapin Soup

A soup made from calf's liver, vegetables, bacon, and a sauce of tomato, oil, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver and vegetables

  1. Boil the calf's liver in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add small herbs, pepper, cloves, onion, and carrot to the pot.

  3. Remove the vegetables when cooked.

  4. Mash the vegetables through a colander.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry salt pork or bacon to extract the fat.

  2. Add onion, celery, and peppers and cook until brown.

  3. Stir in tomato and cook until well combined.

Make the balls and finish the soup

  1. Mix salad oil, egg yolk, and a pinch of cayenne pepper to form a paste.

  2. Roll the paste into small balls.

  3. Add the balls to the Spanish sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce into the soup.

  5. When the balls rise to the top, skim them out.

  6. In a soup tureen, combine wine and lemon slice.

  7. Pour the wine and lemon slice into the soup.

  8. Cut the calf's liver into small pieces.

  9. Add the pieces to the soup.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 soup, giving it its meaty flavor and texture.
Salt pork or bacon
Its rendered fat carries flavor into the sauce and adds richness.
Tomato
Adds acidity and color to the sauce, balancing the rich fat and liver.
Egg yolk
Binds the oil and seasoning into a paste that holds its shape in the soup.

The step that matters

Simmering the liver before cutting. Boiling the liver fully cooks and firms it, so it holds its shape when cut into small pieces and added to the soup rather than breaking apart.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pepper, onion, carrot, pork, celery, tomato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, onion, carrot, pork, celery, tomato. 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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