Skip to main content
Main

Terrapin Stew

A stew of terrapin meat cooked with butter, claret, Madeira wine, spices, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Terrapin Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Boil the terrapins until the shells can be easily removed.

  2. Carefully open the shells and pick out the meat.

  3. Remove the liver without breaking the gall bladder and discard the gall bladder.

Stew and season

  1. In a pan, stew the meat in butter, claret, and Madeira wine.

  2. Season with cayenne pepper, mace, nutmeg, marjoram, and parsley.

  3. Add mushroom ketchup to taste while the mixture is very hot.

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. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Terrapins
Provide the meat that forms the body of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the stewed meat.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that moistens and seasons the stew.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth, enriching the liquid as it stews.

The step that matters

Removing the liver without breaking the gall bladder. The gall bladder holds bitter fluid that can taint the meat if it bursts. Removing it whole, without puncturing it, keeps the flavour of the stew clean.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, madeira wine, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram, parsley, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, madeira wine, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram, parsley, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes