Skip to main content
Main

Terrapin Hash

A hash of lamb or veal, eggs, butter, water, cloves, sherry, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Terrapin Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat from the lamb or veal and cut into olive-sized pieces.

  2. Dust the meat with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the water, cloves, and chopped hard boiled eggs.

  2. Add the meat to the saucepan and heat until scalding hot.

  3. Stir in the sherry or madeira and Worcestershire sauce.

  4. Serve very hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 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

Lamb or veal
Provides the meat that forms the body of the hash.
Flour
Coats the meat so the surface thickens and helps the sauce cling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the hot mixture.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a creamy texture to the sauce.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and a deep, fortified wine flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat until scalding hot. Heating the meat until it is scalding hot cooks it through and lets the flour thicken the liquid, while overheating can toughen the meat and make the sauce separate.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, butter, egg, sherry, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, butter, egg, sherry, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes