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Brown Stew of Terrapin

A stew made from terrapin meat simmered in a brown butter and flour sauce with Madeira wine and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brown Stew of Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour over medium heat until browned.

  2. Gradually add the water, stirring until smooth.

  3. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the terrapin to the sauce and heat until scalding hot.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Serve immediately in a tureen with Madeira and lemon juice.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 main body of the stew, providing its substance and flavour.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, and with flour forms the base roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux with the butter, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the stew gently when stirred in off the heat, adding richness.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy stew.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if the stew is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring them in lets them thicken smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, 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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