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Prepared Terrapins

A stew of cooked terrapin meat and liver with butter, spices, flour, cream, egg yolks, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Prepared Terrapins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Put the terrapins alive in boiling water for 3 minutes, one by one.

  2. Remove the terrapins from the water and take off the skin from the feet.

  3. Place the terrapins in a fresh pot of boiling water with salt and boil for 30 minutes or until tender.

  4. Break open the shell and use all the meat except the head.

  5. Be careful not to break the gall and sand-bag found in the liver.

Make the stew

  1. Use half of the liver, mix it smooth with flour and cream, and cut the rest into pieces with the meat.

  2. For each terrapin, add ½ cup of butter, cayenne pepper, salt, ground allspice, and a small amount of mace.

  3. After removing from heat, add the beaten egg yolks and wine to taste.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Terrapins
The main meat, which becomes tender through simmering in salted water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the stew.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the stew off the heat to thicken it and enrich its texture.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stew.
Flour
Mixed with the liver and cream to thicken and smooth it.
Cream
Adds richness and body, carrying the smooth liver mixture.

The step that matters

After removing from heat, add the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. Added to a boiling stew they can scramble and turn grainy, so they should go in off the heat and be stirred well.

Swap the mace

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

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

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