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Terrapin Stew

A stew of salt‑water terrapin meat simmered with sherry, port, butter, jelly, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne, salt, cream, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and port wine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Terrapin Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Boil the terrapins in water until the meat loosens from the skin.

  2. Remove the terrapins and let them cool until manageable.

  3. Carefully remove the shell, avoiding the gall near the liver.

Stew and serve

  1. In a pot, combine the terrapins, sherry wine, port wine, butter, jelly, Worcestershire sauce, Cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew the mixture until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Pour in the cream and stir until heated and well mixed.

  4. Serve in a metal or silver stew dish with an alcohol lamp.

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. Sherry + port winetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Wine + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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 and rich as it stews in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the stew a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the sharpness of the wines.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished stew.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and fruity aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Removing the shell and gall. The gall sac near the liver is bitter and can taint the meat and sauce if it is torn or left in, so it must be removed carefully.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, wine, port wine, butter, sauce, pepper, cream):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, port wine, butter, sauce, pepper, cream. 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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