Skip to main content
Main

Mock Terrapin for Breakfast

A dish of browned calf's liver with flour, mustard, eggs, and water, served for breakfast.

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

Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Season the calf’s liver.

  2. Dredge the liver pieces thickly with flour.

Cook

  1. Fry the seasoned liver in a large pan with butter until browned.

  2. Add the floured liver to the pan.

  3. Stir in mustard, salt, pepper, and chopped hard boiled eggs.

  4. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens.

  5. Add a little water.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Liver + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 of the dish and browns in the butter for savoury flavour.
Flour
Coats the liver and thickens the mixture as it cooks in the pan.
Butter
Fats the pan so the liver browns well and adds richness.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, creamy texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until the mixture thickens. Flour-thickened mixtures can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred, and the starch needs steady heat and stirring to thicken smoothly without lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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