Baltimore Style of Making Terrapin Stew Without Terrapin
Marshall Thomas, Deer Park, Md., July, 1889
Cut up a rabbit in pieces one inch square, and do the same thing with a calf's head which has been thoroughly cleaned and prepared. Add to it whatever you may have left over of chicken livers, gizzards, and small pieces of fried bacon or ham. Flavor with salt, pepper and a laurel leaf. Let it simmer for two hours a day for two days, (four hours in all). Skim off all grease and add to it two or three hard boiled eggs, cut fine, and a wineglassful of white wine.
A country-house “mock terrapin” from Maryland, terrapin’s own home turf — rabbit and calf’s head conjuring the famous stew without the turtle.
- An honest imitation of a luxuryBaltimore was terrapin country, and terrapin was dear. This uses rabbit, calf’s head, and odds and ends to fake the beloved stew — and spares a now-protected turtle in the bargain.
- Calf’s head is hard to findFew modern butchers carry it. Substitute more rabbit plus a split pig’s trotter, or a little extra veal, for the same gelatin-rich body.
- “Laurel leaf” = bay leafOne dried bay leaf; fish it out before serving.
- “Two hours a day for two days”Simply four hours of gentle simmering in total — you can do it in one long afternoon. The two-day method was about the old wood stove, not the meat.
- A wineglassful of white wineAbout ¼ cup (2 fl oz), stirred in near the end with the chopped egg.
- Skim wellLifting off the grease before finishing gives the clean, glossy stew that terrapin was famous for.
Maryland’s diamondback terrapin was the most celebrated luxury of the American table in the late 1800s, and nowhere was it more revered than around the Chesapeake and Baltimore. That prestige spawned a whole genre of “terrapin without terrapin,” built to mimic the rich stew from cheaper meats. This recipe’s dateline — Deer Park, Maryland, 1889 — places it at a fashionable mountain resort served by the B&O Railroad, exactly the sort of summer retreat where such genteel imitations flourished. Overhunting eventually collapsed the wild terrapin population, and the mock versions outlived the dish they imitated.
From page 24 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
