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Mock Terrapin

A duck dish with egg yolk, cream, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the ducks

  1. Clean the ducks.

  2. Cook the ducks in boiling water with the liver, cloves, salt, peppercorns, and parsley until tender.

  3. Remove the ducks from the kettle and let them cool.

  4. Cut the ducks and liver into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the hard-boiled egg yolks into a smooth paste, then gradually add the thick cream.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and milk, and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually stir in the egg yolk and cream mixture, stirring constantly until it reaches boiling point.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the diced meat and heat through.

  2. Serve.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour as the base for the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a stable, smooth base.
Ducks
Supply the main meat, which becomes tender from simmering.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk and cream mixture into the hot sauce. Stirring constantly while bringing it to a boil keeps the egg yolks from scrambling into lumps and lets the sauce thicken evenly and smoothly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, liver, egg, cream, butter, flour, milk. 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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