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Fricassée of Terrapines, Maryland Fashion

A creamy fricassée made from terrapines, butter, parsley, aromatics, flour, cream, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Fricassée of Terrapines, Maryland Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapin

  1. Plunge the live terrapines into boiling water for a moment to remove the horny substance covering them.

  2. Boil the terrapines in salted water for 30 minutes, then drain and open them.

  3. Remove the head and fins, and cut the meat into pieces.

Make the fricassée

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter and add the meat along with parsley and aromatics; fry until browned.

  2. Season well, sprinkle with flour, and gradually add cream to moisten.

  3. Let it boil while stirring for 4 minutes, then add sherry.

  4. Cook for an additional 8 to 10 minutes, then remove from heat and thicken the sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Terrapines
Provide the main meat, which is cut into pieces and cooked in the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the meat, adding richness and browning the surface.
Flour
Thickens the cream sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Cream
Moistens the floured meat and forms the body of the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, balancing the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce after adding flour and cream. Flour must be cooked in the liquid while stirring so starch swells and thickens the sauce smoothly; adding cream gradually prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, thyme, flour, cream, sherry. 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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