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Mock Terrapin Soup

A soup made with calf's liver, eggs, butter, flour, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the calf's liver in cold water.

  2. Place the liver in warm water and parboil for a few minutes.

  3. Remove the liver, chop it finely, and return it to the same water.

  4. Season the water with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and mustard.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the flour smoothly with the butter.

  2. Stir the butter‑flour mixture into the soup.

  3. Let the soup boil for 20 minutes.

Form and cook the balls

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard‑boiled eggs.

  2. Mix the mashed yolks with the raw egg yolk, sweet oil, and enough flour to bind.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls. Flatten one end of each ball.

  4. Drop the balls into boiling water. Reduce heat.

  5. Let the balls stand for 10 minutes.

  6. Skim the balls out into a tureen.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sherry to the soup.

  2. Pour the sherry over the balls.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the main body and meaty flavour of the soup, standing in for turtle meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with the flour forms a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup with the butter and binds the egg-yolk mixture into balls.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks are mashed to give the balls a firm, crumbly, rich texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a fragrant, wine-like aroma at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Dropping the balls into boiling water, then reducing the heat. Egg yolks set when heated, so a rolling boil can toughen or break the balls. Reducing the heat keeps the water simmering gently so the balls cook through and hold their shape.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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