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Stewed Terrapin

A stew of terrapin meat, blood, eggs, and wine, simmered with spices and finished with cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Stewed Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Plunge the terrapins alive into boiling water for less than an hour until the shells crack.

  2. Remove them and let them cool.

  3. Take off the shell and outer skin, saving all the blood.

  4. If there are eggs, set them aside.

  5. Remove the insides carefully, avoiding breaking the gall.

  6. Cut the liver and terrapin meat into small pieces.

Stew

  1. Add the blood and juice.

  2. Add ½ pint of water.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the mixture in a stewpan. Use flour to prevent boiling.

  4. Stew slowly for 10 minutes.

  5. Add salt, black and cayenne pepper, and a small blade of mace.

  6. Add ⅓ cup of brandy and ½ pint of sherry wine.

  7. Let it simmer gently.

  8. About 10 minutes before serving, add ½ pint of rich cream and ½ pound of sweet butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before removing from heat, peel the eggs and add them whole. If no eggs, use hard-boiled yolks.

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. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 and liver, which give the stew its body and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid so it becomes smooth and rich rather than thin.
Sweet butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished stew a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Rich cream
Adds fat and mildness, softening the stew and rounding out the sharper wine and spice flavours.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stew.

The step that matters

Stewing the flour mixture. Flour dispersed into hot liquid can clump or scorch if left unattended; stirring keeps it smooth and thickens the stew evenly while preventing it from boiling too hard.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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