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Mock Terrapin
Mince cold veal very fine, sprinkle with salt and cayenne. Mash the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs, three tablespoonfuls cooking wine, three tablespoonfuls cream or milk, a little nutmeg and a little mixed mustard, a large lump of butter with a little flour rubbed in.
Let all steam five minutes, and serve hot on toast.
A nice relish for breakfast or lunch.-Miss E. S., La.
A quick made dish for using up roast veal, built to imitate the rich egg-and-cream sauce of a diamondback terrapin stew. It comes together in under ten minutes once the veal is minced, so have the toast ready first.
- The hinge: gentle heat"Let all steam five minutes" means the lowest possible heat in a covered pan, or a bowl over simmering water. The body comes from mashed hard-boiled yolks and a little flour rubbed into butter; hard boiling will make the butter and cream separate and the mixture turn greasy or grainy.
- Quantities are for about a cup of vealThe original gives no measure for the meat. Three egg yolks and three tablespoons each of wine and cream will coat roughly 1 to 1½ cups of finely minced cooked veal; reckon on two or three servings on toast.
- Cooking wineAlmost certainly not the salted "cooking wine" sold today; in books of this period and region the wine to hand was usually sherry or Madeira. A dry sherry is a safe reading; two to three tablespoons is right, and it wants to warm through rather than reduce.
- A large lump of butterRead it as 1½ to 2 tablespoons, with about a teaspoon of flour rubbed into it — a raw beurre manié that thickens as the mixture warms. Rub it smooth between your fingers or you will get flour specks.
- Mixed mustardMustard powder slaked with a little water to a paste, i.e. ordinary prepared mustard. Half a teaspoon of a plain English or Dijon mustard does the job; anything sweet or grainy pulls the dish out of character.
- Veal, and what to use insteadCold roast or braised veal shoulder is closest to the intended texture. Cooked chicken thigh or turkey works and is easier to find; mince it by hand with a knife rather than in a processor, which turns it to paste.
- Cayenne and nutmegThe recipe asks for "a little nutmeg" and does not measure the cayenne; cayenne was standard seasoning in terrapin stews, so it can be the more forward of the two. A pinch of nutmeg and a good pinch of cayenne, tasted and adjusted at the end, since the sauce cannot be boiled to concentrate it.
- ServingButtered toast cut into triangles, served the moment the pan comes off the heat. The sauce stiffens as it cools and does not reheat well.
Terrapin — specifically the diamondback of the Chesapeake — was one of the great luxury foods of nineteenth-century Eastern seaboard cookery, stewed with butter, cream, egg yolks and Madeira and priced accordingly. "Mock" dishes of this kind were the standard Victorian answer to an expensive ingredient: mock turtle soup from a calf's head, mock terrapin from cold veal, the imitation resting on the sauce rather than on the meat. That this version reproduces the sherry, cream, yolks and cayenne while quietly substituting yesterday's roast tells you what cooks understood the dish to actually taste like. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialed housekeepers across the South, which is why this one arrives credited to "Miss E. S., La." — Louisiana, where the diamondback's range does extend, even though the celebrated trade centred on the Chesapeake. By the early twentieth century wild diamondbacks had been so heavily fished that the real dish largely disappeared from American tables, and the mock version may well have outlasted the original.