Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Terrapin, with Cream

A creamy stew of terrapin meat cooked with butter, flour, cream, Madeira, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Terrapin, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour until it bubbles.

  2. Gradually add the cream, salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the terrapin meat and heat until scalding hot.

  2. Move the saucepan to a cooler part of the stove to keep hot but not boiling.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks, ensuring the mixture does not boil.

  4. Pour into a tureen with the Madeira and lemon juice.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce, adding richness and a silky texture.
Terrapin meat
Serves as the main protein, giving the stew its substance and flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a velvety, custard-like body when gently heated.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but if the mixture boils they can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, meat, egg, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, meat, egg, lemon. 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.

More stewed terrapin recipes

with Cream 5 See all 45 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes