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Imitation Terrapin

A stew of calf head with forcemeat balls, seasoned with Worcestershire sauce, lemon, and brown sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Imitation Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the calf's head a day before making the dish and let it cool in the broth.

  2. Slice the meat from the head and dice it.

  3. Mince the tongue and mix with fine crumbs, pepper, salt, and the raw egg to form forcemeat balls.

  4. Roll the balls in beaten egg and then in flour; refrigerate until ready to use.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Season a cup of the broth with Worcestershire sauce and salt, then stir in the butter mixed with browned flour and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the diced meat and simmer for 10 minutes before adding the lemon juice and brown sherry.

  3. Drop in the forcemeat balls, cover the saucepan, and place it in boiling water for 10 minutes before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Calf's head
Provides the main meat and gelatinous body when simmered in broth.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Raw egg
Binds the forcemeat balls so they hold their shape while cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the forcemeat balls to the sauce. Once the balls are dropped in, the sauce should be kept at a gentle heat under a cover; a hard boil can break the sauce and toughen the egg-bound balls.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

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

More terrapin recipes

Chicken 66Stew 48Stewed 45Mock 44Mock Soup 8Soup 8 See all 4 →

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