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Stewed Terrapin

A stew of terrapin meat cooked with butter, pepper, egg yolk paste, Madeira wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapin

  1. Put the terrapins into boiling water and simmer until the feet are tender.

  2. Remove from water, clean, and pick the meat from the shells, cutting it into pieces.

Cook the terrapin

  1. Melt the butter in a pan; when hot, add the terrapin pieces and pepper.

Make the paste

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs until smooth, then gradually mix in the Madeira wine until a thin paste forms.

Finish the dish

  1. Add the grated nutmeg to the paste and cover the terrapins with it.

  2. Heat the dish thoroughly without breaking the gall bladder.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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, which becomes tender with simmering and gentle heating.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps coat and moisten the terrapin pieces.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed smooth, they thicken the sauce and give it a creamy, rich texture.
Madeira wine
Thins the yolk mixture into a paste and adds sweetness and depth of flavor.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice that complements the rich paste.

The step that matters

Heat the dish thoroughly without breaking the gall bladder.. The gall bladder holds a very bitter fluid. If it bursts during cooking, that bitterness spreads through the meat and sauce and can spoil the flavor, so it should be left intact while handling and heating.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, egg, madeira wine):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, egg, madeira 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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