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Another Dressing for Terrapins

A clear soup-based dressing with butter, sherry wine, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Another Dressing for Terrapins

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the clear soup to a boil.

  2. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  3. Combine the mashed yolks with the boiling soup.

  4. Stir in the butter and sherry wine.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed yolks thicken the soup and give the dressing a rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to balance the rich butter and yolks.
Clear soup
Serves as the liquid base that the yolks and butter are blended into.

The step that matters

Combine the mashed yolks with the boiling soup. Yolks mixed into very hot liquid can clump or scramble if added too fast. Mashing them smooth first and stirring gradually helps them disperse evenly into a uniform, creamy dressing.

“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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