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Mock Terrapin

A veal dish simmered in Madeira wine, butter, flour, spices, and lemon, served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Chop the cooked veal finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves.

  2. Add the chopped veal and the cooking liquor, then stir well.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes over low heat.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the wine and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Top with lemon slices 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Veal
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquor into a smooth, cohesive filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the spices into the filling.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a sweet, fortified aroma to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the flour into the butter before adding liquid. Flour must be cooked in the fat so its starch can thicken the liquid smoothly without lumps. Stirring in the cooking liquor and veal soon after helps the mixture thicken evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, madeira wine, butter, flour, nutmeg, allspice, meat):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, madeira wine, butter, flour, nutmeg, allspice, meat. 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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