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Baked Terrapins in Maryland Style

A baked terrapin dish seasoned with butter, flour, black pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Terrapins in Maryland Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Half fill a baking pan with dry gravel or sand and heat it in the oven.

  3. Wash the terrapins, remove their heads, and place them top shell down in the sand.

  4. Bake for 1 hour.

  5. Remove from the oven, take off the under shell, gall bladder, and entrails, and loosen the meat without removing it from the back shell.

  6. Remove the legs, skin them, and lay them on top of the meat.

Add the butter mixture and serve

  1. In a bowl, soften the butter and mix in the flour, black pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Add a little more than 1 tablespoon of this mixture into each terrapin.

  3. Return the terrapins to the oven for a few minutes, then serve on a napkin spread over a 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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Terrapins
Form the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is cooked and served.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, softening the mixture so it spreads through the meat.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture so it holds together and coats the meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Returning the terrapins to the oven. Only a few minutes are given after adding the butter mixture. Heating too long can dry the meat or let the butter separate, so the terrapins should be heated just until warm through.

“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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