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Water Turtles or Terrapins

A stew made from turtle meat simmered with onion, herbs, and spiced sauce, finished with butter, flour, sherry, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Water Turtles or Terrapins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Plunge the turtle into a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Skin the tender parts and remove the horny parts of the feet.

  3. Soak the turtle in cold salted water for 10 minutes.

  4. Boil the turtle in hot salted water until tender, depending on its size and age.

  5. Drain and wipe the turtle dry, then carefully loosen the shell and cut it open without touching the gall bladder.

  6. Remove the entrails and gall bladder, then cut the turtle meat into small bits.

Make the stew

  1. Season the meat with pepper, salt, onion, sweet herbs, and spiced sauce or catsup.

  2. Save the juice from the meat and combine everything in a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid.

  3. Stew gently for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Add butter, browned flour mixed with cold water, and brown sherry.

  5. Mix the egg yolk with a little hot liquid to prevent curdling, then add it to the saucepan.

  6. Bring to a boil once and transfer to a covered dish.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Turtle
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long boiling and then stewing.
Browned flour
Thickens the stew liquid so it becomes smooth and body-rich rather than watery.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding richness and smoothness when tempered with hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Brown sherry
Adds depth, aroma and mild acidity that round out the savory flavour.

The step that matters

Mix the egg yolk with a little hot liquid before adding it. Egg yolk proteins coagulate when exposed to high heat, so adding it directly to the pot can curdle the sauce. Tempering with hot liquid first gently raises its temperature and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sauce, butter, flour, sherry, egg. 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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