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Terrapin, Maryland Style

A Maryland-style terrapin dish cooked with butter, cayenne pepper, salt, and optional sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Terrapin, Maryland Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Wash the terrapins thoroughly.

  2. Place them in a pot of boiling water with the lid tightly on.

  3. Cook until the skin comes off easily and the bones separate from the meat.

  4. Remove the entrails, being careful to extract the liver without breaking the gall.

  5. Cut the terrapin meat into pieces.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the pieces in a chafing dish.

  2. Add butter, cayenne pepper, and salt to the terrapin in the chafing dish.

  3. Serve with Sherry wine at the table 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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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, which is cooked until the skin loosens and the bones separate.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky, moist texture to the meat.

The step that matters

Removing the entrails without breaking the gall. The gall is bitter and can taint the meat if it bursts, so the liver should be removed carefully and intact.

“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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