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Water-turtles, or Terrapins

A stew of turtle meat, eggs, liver, and spices simmered with wine and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Water-turtles, or Terrapins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Plunge the turtle into a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Skin the undersides and remove the horny parts of the feet.

  3. Soak the turtle in cold water for 10 minutes.

  4. Boil the turtle in slightly salted water until the shells begin to separate.

  5. Carefully remove the legs and meat, saving any eggs.

  6. Cut the terrapin meat and livers into 1‑inch pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the terrapin meat, eggs, liver, and 1 quart of water.

  2. Add the cloves, nutmeg, and butter.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Brown the flour in the oven.

  5. Add the browned flour to the saucepan with the sugar.

  6. Stir in the lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste.

  7. After 30 minutes, add the port wine and sherry.

  8. Heat briefly.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon slices.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 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

Terrapin meat
Forms the body of the stew and provides its main substance and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Browned first, it thickens the stew and adds a nutty, toasted flavour.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished stew.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the finished stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy flavours of the stew.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in the oven. Flour browned slowly to a light colour toasts for nutty flavour and thickens less than raw flour. Overbrowning leads to bitterness and dark colour, so watch it closely.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, liver, nutmeg, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, liver, nutmeg, butter, flour, sugar. 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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