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Stewed Terrapin

A stew of terrapin with butter, cream, sherry, eggs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapin

  1. Cut the terrapins.

  2. Place them in a stew pan with water, butter, and the juices from the shells.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and spices.

  4. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Make the egg and cream mixture

  1. Boil the eggs for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the yolks.

  3. Mash them finely.

  4. Gradually mix the cream with the mashed yolks.

Finish and serve

  1. Add this mixture to the stew along with the sherry, terrapin eggs, and thinly sliced lemon.

  2. Heat the stew without boiling to prevent the cream from breaking.

  3. Serve hot in silver-plated saucepans.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 that forms the body of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the stew a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished stew.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture and add richness through their emulsifying proteins.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the rich cream and butter.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that cuts through the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Heat the stew without boiling. Egg yolks and cream thicken through gentle heat; boiling can curdle or break the cream, leaving a grainy, separated texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sherry, egg, pepper, allspice, lemon. 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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