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Stewed Water Turtles, or Terrapins

A stew of water turtle meat and eggs, flavored with butter, Madeira, spices, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Water Turtles, or Terrapins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turtle

  1. Wash the turtle.

  2. Place it alive in boiling water with a little salt, and boil for 10-15 minutes until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Remove the shell, extract the meat, and discard the sand-bag, gall, and entrails.

  4. Cut the meat into pieces.

Stew

  1. Place it in a stew pan with its eggs and enough fresh butter to stew well, then cover the pan.

  2. Let it stew until hot throughout, shaking it occasionally over the fire.

Make the sauce

  1. In another pan, combine the egg yolk, Madeira or sherry, nutmeg, mace, currant jelly, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir in a large lump of fresh butter.

  3. Heat the sauce over the fire until it almost boils, then remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve the stewed terrapins hot in a covered dish, with the sauce separately in a sauce-tureen.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Sherry + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Turtle eggs
Add richness and a soft, custardy texture to the stewed meat.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the meat moist while it stews.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body as it heats.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the sweet jelly and rich butter.
Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and fruity tartness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce until it almost boils. Egg yolk thickens when gently heated but can curdle or scramble if it gets too hot, so the sauce should be warmed slowly and not allowed to boil.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sherry, nutmeg, mace, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sherry, nutmeg, mace, pepper. 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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