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Stewed Terrapin

A stew of terrapin meat, blood, and cream, flavored with spices and fortified with brandy and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Stewed Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Plunge the terrapins alive into boiling water until the sides and lower shell begin to crack, about 1 hour.

  2. Remove the terrapins and let them cool.

  3. Take off the shell and outer skin, saving as much blood as possible.

  4. Remove the gall from the liver to avoid bitterness.

  5. Cut the liver and terrapin into small pieces.

Make the stew

  1. Add the blood and juice, and ½ cup of water to the stew‑pan.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the mixture.

  3. Let the stew simmer slowly for 10 minutes.

  4. Add salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and mace.

  5. Stir in ⅓ cup of brandy and ½ cup of sherry wine.

  6. Let it simmer gently.

  7. Mix in flour to prevent boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. About 10 minutes before serving, add ½ pint of rich cream and ½ pound of sweet butter.

  2. Peel the eggs and add them whole, or use hard-boiled egg yolks if no eggs are present.

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. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter 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

Terrapins
Provide the meat that forms the body of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew and helps keep the mixture from boiling over.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished stew.
Rich cream
Adds richness and body, softening the stew's flavour.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stew.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body to the stew as a thickening enrichment.

The step that matters

Plunge the terrapins alive into boiling water. The brief scald loosens the shell and skin so they can be removed cleanly. Too little heat leaves them hard to clean, while overcooking toughens the meat and makes the shell difficult to lift off.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, brandy, sherry, wine, cream, 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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