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Terrapin Dressing.

A hot sauce made from terrapin, mustard, cream, sherry, egg yolks, butter, salt, cayenne, and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Terrapin Dressing.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Place the terrapin in a saucepan with hot water underneath and let it steam.

  2. Heat the cream and butter, then stir in the terrapin, mustard, and finely rubbed hard-boiled egg yolks.

  3. Let this mixture boil for about five minutes.

  4. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, heat the sherry wine and pour it in.

  2. Serve very hot, garnished with thin slices of lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Terrapin
Forms the main body of the dressing and supplies its rich, meaty flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they cook and give it a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the mixture stay smooth and creamy.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich dressing.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture boils too hard or too long it can curdle or become grainy. Keeping the boil gentle and timed helps the dressing stay smooth and cohesive.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sherry, wine, egg, butter, pepper, lemon. 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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