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Sauce

Dressing for One Terrapin

A creamy sauce made with butter, cream, Madeira wine, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Dressing for One Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Bring the cream to a boil and add the butter.

  2. Mash the hard-boiled yolks until smooth and stir them in.

  3. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes, then pour in the wine.

Serve

  1. While boiling hot, pour the sauce over the heated terrapin.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Cream + madeira winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce, adding body and a silky texture.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the sauce to thicken it and give it a smooth, rich body.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 minutes, then pour in the wine. Boiling the cream reduces it and concentrates the sauce; adding the wine after the boil keeps its delicate aromas from cooking off. Pour the wine in at the end so its flavor stays bright.

“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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