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Soup

Mock Terrapin Soup

A soup made with calf's liver, salt pork, vegetables, and wine, simmered and served with small balls of egg yolk paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the liver and vegetables

  1. Boil calf's liver in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add small herbs, black pepper, ground cloves, onion, and carrot.

  3. Remove vegetables when done and mash them through a colander.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry salt pork or bacon until fat is rendered.

  2. Add onion, celery, and small peppers to the fat and cook until browned.

  3. Stir in tomato and cook for a few more minutes.

  4. Mix salad oil, egg yolk, and cayenne pepper to form a paste.

  5. Shape the paste into small balls and add to the Spanish sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the sauce with the soup and skim off any floating bits.

  2. In a tureen, add white wine and lemon slice, then pour in the soup.

  3. Cut calf's liver into small pieces and add to the soup.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the body of the soup and gives it a rich, meaty flavour that mimics terrapin.
Salt pork or bacon
Its rendered fat carries flavour into the sauce base for the soup.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies with the oil to bind the paste into small balls that hold their shape in the soup.
Tomato
Adds acidity and body to the sauce, balancing the richness of the liver.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma when poured into the tureen before the soup.

The step that matters

Shape the paste into small balls. The paste must be firm enough to hold its shape; if it is too soft it will break up in the hot soup and cloud it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pepper, onion, carrot, pork, celery, tomato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, onion, carrot, pork, celery, tomato. 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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