Name: Bayard's Famous Terrapin Recipe
Ingredients: 2 terrapins; ½ cup rich cream; ½ pound butter; ⅓ cup sherry or madeira

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bayard's Famous Terrapin Recipe

Ingredients

2 terrapins
½ cup rich cream
½ pound butter
⅓ cup sherry or madeira

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

Boil the terrapins in their shells until cooked.
Allow them to cool, then remove the shells.
Remove the gall bladder.
Cut the terrapin into good-sized pieces.

Finish in the chafing dish

Place the pieces in a chafing dish.
Add the cream, butter, and sherry or madeira to the dish.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,038 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Terrapins: The main ingredient; the meat that the whole dish is built around.
Rich cream: Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Sherry or madeira: Adds aroma and a fortified-wine flavor with a hint of sweetness.

“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.