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Terrapin Stew

A stew made from terrapin, butter, wine, spices, and mashed egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Terrapin Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapin

  1. Boil the terrapin for three hours until soft.

  2. Carefully open the terrapin and remove the sandbag, spongy part, and gall without breaking them.

  3. Cut the remaining terrapin into small pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, combine the terrapin pieces, butter, wine, salt, black pepper, red pepper, mustard, and mashed egg yolks, then mix well and stew for 15 minutes.

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

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

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Sherry + mustardtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Terrapin
Forms the main body of the stew, providing the meat that becomes tender after long boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, rounding out the flavour of the stew.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the stew, they thicken the liquid and add richness.

The step that matters

Opening the terrapin without breaking the gall. The gall is bitter and can spoil the flavour of the meat if it bursts, so it must be removed intact while the shell is opened.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sherry, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sherry, pepper, 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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