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Terrapin Salad

A salad made from boiled terrapin meat mixed with a creamy butter and egg yolk dressing, seasoned with cayenne, salt, wine, and optional mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Terrapin Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapin

  1. Boil the terrapins until the shells come off easily and the nails pull out.

  2. Cut the terrapins into small pieces and carefully remove the sand-bag and gall.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and rub them into a powder with the butter until creamy and light.

  2. Add the flour to the egg and butter mixture.

  3. Combine this mixture with the terrapin meat in a saucepan.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and salt, and let it boil for one to two minutes.

  5. Just before removing from heat, add wine and mace if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Hard-boiled eggs
Their yolks rubbed with butter form the creamy, rich base of the salad.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture when worked into the yolks.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly so it holds together rather than running loose.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma, brightening the rich butter and egg mixture.

The step that matters

Boiling after combining with the terrapin meat. Once the flour is in, the mixture thickens as it heats, and it can scorch or turn lumpy if left too long or stirred too little. A brief boil of one to two minutes cooks the flour so it thickens smoothly without a raw starchy taste.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, pepper, wine):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, pepper, wine. 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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