Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Philadelphia Stewed Terrapin
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the terrapins
Boil the terrapins in a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes until you can remove the outer skin and toenails.
Return the terrapins to fresh boiling water with 1 heaping teaspoon of salt and boil slowly for 1 to 1.5 hours until the shells part easily and the flesh is tender.
Remove the terrapins from the pot.
Save ½ cup of the boiling liquid.
Remove the undershell.
Let the undershell cool enough to handle.
Extract the meat from the upper shells, discarding the sand-bags, bladders, intestines, and gall-bag carefully.
Break the terrapin meat into pieces.
Make the stew
Combine the meat pieces with the liver, hard-boiled eggs, accumulated juices, and saved boiling liquid in a china-lined saucepan over moderate heat.
Mix the flour with a small portion of butter to a cream.
Stir the flour-butter cream into the terrapin mixture.
Mix the egg yolks with salt, cayenne, remaining butter, and wine to a smooth paste.
Add the egg yolk paste to the terrapin and stir well.
When hot, add the cream.
Serve immediately without boiling after adding the cream.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,505 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- Terrapins
- Provide the main meat, which becomes tender after long gentle simmering.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky texture when blended with the flour.
- Flour
- Thickens the stew as a butter-flour paste blended into the hot mixture.
- Hard-boiled eggs
- Add body and richness to the stew as they are folded in with the meat.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich and thicken the sauce when mixed into a smooth paste and stirred in.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body at the end of cooking.
The step that matters
Adding the cream and not boiling. Cream and egg yolks can curdle or separate if they boil, so the stew should be kept hot but not boiled once the cream goes in, then served right away.
“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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