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Mock Terrapin

A dish of liver or veal or chicken cooked with mustard, eggs, butter, and sherry, served as a mock terrapin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Hash the liver, veal, or chicken coarsely and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Coat the meat thickly with flour and fry in butter until browned.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the mustard, cayenne, chopped eggs, butter, and water. Let boil for a few minutes.

  2. Rub together butter and flour in a hot saucepan. Add milk and bring to a boil.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in the meat, salt, and pepper, and heat thoroughly.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk, sherry, and parsley. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 or veal or chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, browned to add savory flavor and texture.
Flour
Coats the meat for browning and helps thicken the milk sauce.
Milk
Forms the base of the creamy sauce that coats the meat.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce when stirred in off the heat.
Hardboiled eggs
Adds body and a soft, chopped texture throughout the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot, leaving a grainy texture. Removing the pan from the heat before adding it keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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

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