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Stewed Terrapin

A stew of terrapin meat, eggs, and cream, flavored with spices and fortified with brandy and sherry.

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 terrapin

  1. Plunge the live terrapins into boiling water until the shells begin to crack, about 1 hour.

  2. Remove them and let them cool, then take off the shell and outer skin, saving all the blood.

  3. If there are eggs, set them aside. Carefully remove the insides, avoiding breaking the gall.

  4. Chop the liver and the rest of the terrapin into small pieces, adding the blood and juice.

Stew

  1. Add ½ pint of water and sprinkle flour over the mixture in a stewpan.

  2. Stew slowly for 10 minutes, adding salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and mace.

  3. Stir in ⅓ cup of brandy and ½ pint of sherry wine, and let it simmer gently.

Finish and serve

  1. About 10 minutes before serving, add ½ pint of rich cream and ½ pound of sweet butter, using flour to prevent boiling.

  2. Just before removing from heat, peel the eggs and add them whole.

  3. If no eggs are available, 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, along with the liver and blood that enrich the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stewed liquid so the sauce clings to the meat.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a silky, rounded mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Rich cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sherry and brandy flavours.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.
Eggs
Add richness and body; hard-boiled yolks substitute when terrapin eggs are unavailable.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and butter. Cream and butter are rich dairy fats that can curdle or separate and scorch if they boil. Keeping the stew below a boil, and using flour as the record directs, helps the sauce stay smooth and emulsified.

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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