Skip to main content
Main

Ego Terrapin

Egg Terrapin is a savory dish of chopped hard‑boiled eggs, olives, cream, beaten yolks, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and sherry work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 820 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Ego Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and olives.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped eggs and olives, and cook until thick.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the cream with the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Drop the egg and olive mixture into the cream mixture and let it simmer gently for a few seconds.

  4. Stir in the sherry and serve in green peppers or individual dishes.

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. Olive + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together820 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Olive + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Egg + sherrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, setting into a thick, sliced-egg texture when cooked.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, forming a smooth sauce around the eggs.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture as they heat, giving the sauce body and a silky texture.
Olives
Add a salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the rich cream.
Sherry
Adds a subtle aromatic, slightly sweet and acidic note to finish the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the egg mixture into the cream gently. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but too much heat or boiling can make them scramble and turn grainy. Keeping the simmer gentle and brief keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

“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