Skip to main content
Main

To Cook a Terrapin

A stew of terrapin meat seasoned with spices and cooked with port wine and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Cook a Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Boil the terrapins until the nails pull out easily and the outer shell peels off.

  2. Wash them in warm water and boil again until the shell cracks easily when struck with a knife.

  3. Remove the upper and lower shells, then carefully take off the shoulders to expose the liver and gall.

  4. Remove the gall and sandbag with great care to avoid contamination.

Make the stew

  1. Mix the terrapin meat with salt, black pepper, red pepper, mustard, cloves, and mace.

  2. Layer the terrapin and seasoning alternately in a stew-pan.

  3. Add the liquor from the terrapins, port wine, and butter.

  4. Thicken with bits of butter and flour as you would for a chicken pie.

  5. Cover and stew moderately until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep covered dish.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Terrapins
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and cooked through during stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich sauce when combined with butter.
Port wine
Adds acidity and sweetness, contributing depth of flavour to the stew.

The step that matters

Remove the gall with great care. Damaging the gall can contaminate the meat and spoil its flavour, so it must be removed intact and cleanly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, clove, port wine, butter, flour):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, clove, port wine, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

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