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Mock Terrapin Soup

A soup of diced calf liver, egg balls, stock, Spanish sauce, Madeira wine, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the liver

  1. Boil the smallest lobe of calf's liver in boiling water with 1 tablespoon salt and a bouquet of herbs until done, then chop into ¼ inch dice.

  2. Heat 2 quarts of stock and ½ pint of Spanish sauce, then add the chopped liver and keep hot.

Make the egg-balls

  1. Sieve the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs, mix with 2 teaspoons oil, a little salt and pepper, the yolk of 1 raw egg, and enough flour to form a stiff paste.

  2. Roll out to ½ inch thick, cut into strips and dice, then roll into small balls.

  3. Poach the egg-balls in boiling water for 5 minutes, then add them to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, stir in the Madeira wine and pour into a tureen.

  2. Serve with thin slices of lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + madeira winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Madeira wine + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Spanish sauce
Gives the soup body and a rich, savoury depth.
Eggs
Hard-boiled yolks and a raw yolk bind the flour paste into firm egg-balls that hold their shape.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth when stirred in just before serving.
Flour
Forms a stiff paste with the egg yolks so the egg-balls keep their shape while poaching.

The step that matters

Poaching the egg-balls. The stiff paste needs to be cooked fully in gently boiling water for the set time; undercooked flour stays raw-tasting and cooking too hard can break the balls apart.

“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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