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To Prepare Terrapin

A stew made from terrapin meat, eggs, and liver, cooked until the meat falls off the bones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Prepare Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drop the live terrapin into boiling water and let it cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the skin from the head and feet by rubbing with a cloth.

  3. Wash the terrapin in several waters.

Cook until tender

  1. Put the terrapin into fresh boiling water and cook until tender, about 1 hour.

  2. Check tenderness by pressing the feet between your fingers; if they are not tender, discard them.

  3. Once tender, remove the terrapin from the water and let it cool.

Clean and cut

  1. Cut off the nails, remove the shells, and carefully take out the gall sacks from the liver.

  2. Remove the entrails, lights, heart, head, tail, and white muscles.

  3. Separate the pieces from the joints and cut the meat into 1.5-inch pieces without breaking the bones.

Make the stew

  1. Place the meat, terrapin eggs, and liver in a stew pan, cover with boiling water, and boil until the meat is ready to drop from the bones.

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

What each ingredient does

Live terrapin
Provides the meat that forms the body of the stew, cooked until tender.

The step that matters

Checking the feet for tenderness before removing the terrapin. The feet hold dense connective tissue that softens only with long, gentle cooking. Judging doneness by pressing them shows whether the tough tissue has broken down, so undercooked meat is not served.

“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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