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Stewed Terrapin with Cream

A stew of terrapin pieces simmered with butter, water, milk, and thickened into a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Terrapin with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Stew

  1. Combine the terrapin pieces, salt, pepper, and 1 tablespoon of butter in a stew-pan over medium heat.

  2. Let it stew for a few minutes, then add 1 cup of hot water and the remaining butter.

  3. Stew for 10 minutes, then add 2 cups of rich milk and stew for another 5 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the pan from heat and stir in a thickening agent.

  2. Cover the pan and let it sit for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve the terrapin and sauce over hot tea biscuits or buttered toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Terrapin flesh
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it stews in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor into the sauce.
Rich milk
Forms the creamy body of the sauce and adds milk sweetness.
Thickening agent
Starch or flour swells when heated, thickening the liquid into a sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the thickening agent. Starch needs heat to swell and thicken, but added to a boiling liquid it can clump. Removing the pan from heat before stirring in the thickener and then letting it rest lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken smoothly.

“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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