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Butcher Meat

A stew of turtle meat, cheeks, tongue, and assorted meats simmered with wine, ketchup, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Butcher Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Cut turtle tripe into 2‑inch strips.

  2. Dice the thick part of the cheeks.

  3. Skin the tongue carefully.

  4. Cut the eyes into rings, discarding the black part.

Make the stew

  1. Strain the stock.

  2. Add lemon juice, white pepper, Cayenne pepper, salt, ketchup, white wine, and bacon to the stock.

  3. Add the meat to the stock.

  4. Stew slowly until tender and gravy is absorbed.

  5. Brown the veal force‑meat balls and oysters.

  6. Boil them in the stew for a few minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare a baked dish with a cut paste border.

  2. Pick the ham and turtle meat.

  3. Place them in the dish with the whole tongue in the center.

  4. Garnish with hard boiled egg yolks and green pickles.

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

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

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

  5. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle tripe
Becomes tender through slow stewing, giving the stew its chewy, gelatinous body.
Veal force-meat balls
Browning gives them savoury flavour before they simmer in the stew.
Oysters
Brief simmering in the stew adds a briny, savoury flavour to the gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stock as it simmers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and gravy.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until tender and gravy is absorbed. Low, gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in turtle meat and tripe. Rushing with a hard boil leaves it tough and can make the gravy scorch or reduce unevenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, ketchup, white wine, ham, veal, meat):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, ketchup, white wine, ham, veal, meat. 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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