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Mock Terrapin

A creamy sauce with hard‑boiled egg, lamb or veal, onion, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk and let it thicken.

Finish and season

  1. Season with parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the chopped hard-boiled egg and onion.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the sherry wine.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as it melts into the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy sauce.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds body and richness to the sauce once chopped in.
Cooked lamb or veal
Provides the main meat and savoury bulk of the dish.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk. Adding milk slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly. Dumping it in at once can form lumps that are hard to smooth out, leaving the sauce uneven in texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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