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Stewed Terrapin Ok Turtle

Terrapin or turtle meat stewed in veal stock with cloves, onion, cayenne, and salt, thickened with flour, eggs, and butter, finished with sherry and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Terrapin Ok Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the turtle or terrapin in veal stock with cloves, minced onion, cayenne pepper, and salt very slowly for about 2 hours.

  2. Strain the stock and thicken it with browned flour, chopped eggs, and butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the terrapin, sherry wine, and sliced lemon to the thickened stock.

  2. Serve in china or silver shells.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Terrapin or turtle meat
Is the main substance of the dish, cooked slowly until tender in the stock.
Browned flour
Thickens the strained stock so it becomes a rich, body-filled sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the thickened sauce a smooth, round mouthfeel.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a creamy texture to the thickened sauce.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the turtle very slowly. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat and can break it apart. A gentle, slow simmer for about 2 hours lets the connective tissue soften so the meat becomes tender while the stock stays clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, lemon, pepper, butter, parsley, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, lemon, pepper, butter, parsley, 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.

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