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Terrapin, Family Style

A family-style terrapin dish cooked with butter, lemon, sherry, brandy, and a roux, finished with eggs and liver.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Terrapin, Family Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapin

  1. Place the live terrapin in cold water for 1 hour to clean itself.

  2. Plunge it into boiling water for 2 minutes to remove the outer skin.

  3. Boil the cleaned terrapin in salted water for 30-40 minutes.

  4. Remove the meat and entrails, discarding the gall.

  5. Cut the meat and entrails into small pieces, keeping the liver and eggs separate.

Make the stew

  1. Combine the meat, butter, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, and brandy in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and cook until the meat is tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Melt a small piece of butter in a saucepan. Add flour and cook until golden. Add some terrapin stock to the flour mixture and stir until smooth.

  2. Pour the roux into the terrapin mixture.

  3. Add the eggs and liver to the mixture. Cook for 5 more minutes.

  4. Finish with a small piece of butter.

  5. Serve very hot, removing the lemon zest first.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Terrapin
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked into a roux.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a nutty, aromatic depth to the stew.
Brandy
Adds warmth and aroma to the stew.
Eggs
Enrich the sauce and add body as they set with the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the roux to the terrapin mixture. Flour must cook until golden to lose its raw starch taste, and the roux should be stirred smooth before being poured in. Stirring keeps lumps from forming, so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, brandy, flour, 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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