Skip to main content
Main

Terrapin or Turtle

A stew of turtle meat cooked with butter, flour, cream, and spices, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Terrapin or Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Plunge the turtle into boiling water until it is dead.

  2. Remove the outer skin and toe nails.

  3. Rinse the turtle well.

  4. Boil in salted water until perfectly tender.

  5. Take off the shells.

  6. Remove the gall and sandbag.

  7. Clean the terrapin thoroughly.

  8. Cut the meat and entrails into small pieces.

  9. Save all the juice.

Make the stew

  1. Put the pieces into a saucepan without water.

  2. Season with salt, cayenne, and black pepper.

  3. Add the softened butter mixed with flour.

  4. Stir in a few tablespoons of cream last.

  5. Optionally, add the yolks of hard-boiled eggs just before serving.

  6. Stir often while cooking.

  7. Serve very hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Turtle
Provides the main protein and substance of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the juices so the stew becomes creamy.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour mixture. Flour mixed with butter must be stirred in and cooked gently while stirring often. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid, and constant stirring keeps the thickened sauce smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes