Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Terrapin

A stew of terrapin cooked with Madeira wine, butter, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Stewed Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapin

  1. Boil the terrapin in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Cut the terrapin into pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the terrapin, Madeira, salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Beat the cream with the hard-boiled egg yolks and add to the saucepan.

  3. Stir gently without letting it boil.

  4. Serve in a soup tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Madeira wine + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the stew.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture and add richness when stirred gently into the hot liquid.
Madeira wine
Adds aroma and a sweet, fortified depth of flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir gently without letting it boil. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the stew boils, the yolks can curdle and turn grainy, so the stew should be kept just below a simmer.

“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