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Mock Terrapin Soup

A soup made from calf's liver, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mock Terrapin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

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

  2. Soak the liver in warm water and parboil it.

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

Thicken the soup

  1. Mix the flour with the butter until smooth, then stir it into 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Liver + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,177 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 rich, meaty flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping carry flavour and smooth the flour into the soup.

The step that matters

Mix the flour and butter until smooth. Flour added in lumps or dry will clump in hot liquid, leaving pockets of raw starch. Blending it smoothly with the butter first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup uniformly as it heats.

“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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