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To Cook Terrapins

A stew of terrapin meat simmered with butter, flour, cream, Madeira wine, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Cook Terrapins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Put the live terrapins in a pot of boiling water until they are dead.

  2. Remove their outer skin and toe-nails, then wash them in warm water.

  3. Boil the terrapins again until tender, adding a handful of coarse sea salt.

  4. Remove the shells and clean the terrapins, discarding the sand-bag and gall.

  5. Cut the meat and entrails into small pieces and place in a saucepan.

  6. Add the juices from cutting, season with salt, cayenne, and black pepper.

Make the stew

  1. Add ¼ pound of butter and a handful of flour for thickening, stirring well.

  2. Stir in 4-5 tablespoons of cream and ½ pint of Madeira wine.

  3. Serve hot in a deep dish, optionally adding mace, mustard, gall, and hard-boiled egg yolks before serving.

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

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provide the meat that forms the body of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the stew.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the stew becomes rich and coats the meat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the stew.
Madeira wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the terrapins until tender. Terrapin meat is tough and needs thorough, gentle simmering until tender before it is cut and combined. Under-cooked meat stays chewy, while the sauce depends on the meat being fully softened and ready to absorb the seasoning.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, madeira wine, pepper, mustard, egg):

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

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