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Veal Terrapin

A creamy veal dish with eggs, sherry, and lemon, served with potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, brown the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the milk and cook until smooth.

Combine and finish

  1. Stir in the diced veal and season with salt and pepper; simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the chopped hard boiled eggs and lemon juice; cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the sherry and remove from heat.

  4. Garnish with potatoes and quartered hard boiled eggs.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

Butter and flour 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

Cooked veal
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish.
Butter and flour
Browning the fat and flour together forms a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks with the roux.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the sauce as they cook into it.
Sherry
Adds aromatic, slightly sweet and acidic flavor at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk into the roux until smooth. If milk is added too fast or the roux is undercooked, lumps form and the sauce stays pasty. Adding the liquid gradually and stirring while it heats lets starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

“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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