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Imitation Terrapin

A dish of calf's head meat shaped into forcemeat balls, simmered in broth with Worcestershire sauce, butter, and 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 head

  1. Boil the calf's head a day before making the dish.

  2. Let the boiled calf's head cool in the broth.

  3. Slice the meat from the head.

  4. Dice the sliced meat.

  5. Mince the tongue.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Mix the minced tongue with fine crumbs, pepper, salt, and the raw egg to form forcemeat balls.

  2. Roll the forcemeat balls in beaten egg.

  3. Roll the balls in flour.

  4. Refrigerate the coated balls until ready to use.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Season a cup of the broth with Worcestershire sauce and salt.

  2. Stir in the butter mixed with browned flour.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Add the diced meat to the boiling broth.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  6. Add the lemon juice and brown sherry.

  7. Drop the forcemeat balls into the simmering broth.

  8. Cover the pot.

  9. Steam the balls 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, which is diced and simmered in the broth.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the browned flour to thicken it smoothly.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth and adds a toasted, deeper flavor to the sauce.
Raw egg
Binds the minced tongue and crumbs so the forcemeat balls hold their shape.
Fine crumbs
Give the forcemeat balls bulk and structure with the minced tongue.

The step that matters

Drop the forcemeat balls into the simmering broth. The balls are coated in egg and flour and rely on gentle heat to set. A hard boil can break them apart, so they should be added to a steady simmer and kept covered.

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.

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