Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Terrapin

Stewed terrapin is a dish of cooked terrapin meat simmered in butter with egg yolk, Madeira or sherry, nutmeg, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the terrapins

  1. Boil the terrapins in water with a little salt until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Remove the shells and extract the meat, discarding the sand-bag, gall, and entrails.

  3. Cut the meat into pieces.

Stew and make the sauce

  1. Place the meat, its eggs, and enough fresh butter into a stew-pan to stew well. Cover the pan and heat the mixture until hot, shaking it occasionally.

  2. In another pan, heat the beaten egg yolk with Madeira or sherry, nutmeg, mace, and a large lump of fresh butter until almost boiling.

Serve

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sherry + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Sherry + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Terrapins
Provide the main body of meat, which becomes tender through long cooking in water and then butter.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the meat stay soft while it stews.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it gently heats, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and a rich, fortified wine flavour to the sauce.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk sauce. Egg yolk thickens when gently heated but can scramble if it gets too hot. Heating only until almost boiling, while keeping the sauce moving, helps it turn smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More stewed terrapin recipes

with Cream 5 See all 45 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes