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Terrapin Soup

A soup made from terrapin shells, meat, herbs, cream, and a roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Terrapin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Put the shells, heads, and trimmings of the Terrapins into a saucepan with 2 quarts of water and boil gently for 2-3 hours, skimming well.

  2. Strain the liquid into a clean saucepan and add the pieces of Terrapin meat; boil for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the Terrapin pieces and let them cool; strain the liquid into a bowl.

  4. Boil the bones in 2 quarts of water until all the gelatin dissolves, then add the strained liquid, thyme, parsley, peppercorns, cloves, chopped onion, and mace; boil for another 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the cooled Terrapin meat into small square pieces, strain the soup into a clean saucepan, and add the meat; bring to a boil.

  2. In another saucepan, boil 1 quart of cream.

  3. In a separate saucepan, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with the butter over heat until combined, then pour in the boiling cream and strain into the soup.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Terrapins
Provide the meat and, through their shells and bones, the body of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream with the butter, giving the soup a body.
Butter
Enriches the thickening roux and adds fat for flavour and smoothness.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and butter into the cream. Cooking the flour with the butter before adding the boiling cream lets the starch swell evenly. Without this, the thickening can form lumps and leave a raw floury taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, onion, thyme, parsley, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, onion, thyme, parsley, cream, flour, butter. 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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