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Recipe for Terrapin

A stew of terrapin meat seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Recipe for Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Place the terrapins in a tub of cold water and let them wash themselves, then drain the water, add more cold water, and let them wash again.

  2. Drop them into boiling water and cook until their feet are easy to remove, turning them occasionally.

  3. Once the feet are loose, take them out and place them on a dish.

  4. Save a little of the boiling water and strain it.

Make the stew

  1. When the terrapins cool, pick the meat carefully, avoiding breaking the gall.

  2. Split the entrails and cut them into pieces about 1 inch long.

  3. In a stewpan, combine the cut meat with red pepper, black pepper, salt, and mace.

  4. Add enough of the reserved boiling water to cover the meat and stew slowly for about 15 minutes.

  5. Mix browned flour with butter (¼ cup butter and 3 tablespoons flour) and add to the stew.

  6. Add the wine just 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Terrapins
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the stew.
Flour
Browned and mixed with butter, it thickens the stew and adds a toasted flavour.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Avoiding breaking the gall. The gall is bitter and can spoil the flavour of the meat if it bursts during picking, so it must be removed carefully.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, wine. 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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