Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This page describes collecting wild birds' eggs, shooting birds for specimens, or similar practices. These activities are now illegal under wildlife-protection laws, including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they contributed to the decline of the very species described.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Washington Terrapin
1 terrapin 1 1/2 tablespoons butter 1 1/2 tablespoons flour 1 cup cream 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms Salt Few grains cayenne 2 eggs 2 tablespoons Sherry wine Melt the butter, add flour, and pour on slowly the cream. Add terrapin meat with bones cut in pieces, entrails cut smaller, liver separated in pieces, eggs of terrapin, and mushrooms. Season with salt and cayenne. Just before serving, add eggs slightly beaten and two tablespoons Sherry wine. WAYS OF USING REMNANTS OF COOKED FISH
This is a chafing-dish preparation of the kind that made terrapin a luxury course in late nineteenth-century American hotels, but it cannot be reproduced today. The reasons are legal and biological rather than culinary.
- The animal is protectedThe diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin), the species meant here, was harvested heavily by exactly this trade. Commercial harvest is now banned or tightly restricted through most of its range, and several states list it as threatened or of special concern. Assume you cannot lawfully obtain one without checking your own state's rules.
- Other turtles are not a substituteMany freshwater turtle species are likewise protected, and sea turtles are covered by federal endangered-species law. There is no drop-in replacement that keeps the recipe intact.
- The entrails are the point of the dish, and the problemThe recipe directs that liver, entrails and the terrapin's own eggs all go into the sauce. Turtles are a well-known carrier of Salmonella, and wild estuarine animals may also carry accumulated environmental contaminants. Nothing in the method brings this material to a stated temperature.
- No cooking step at allThe terrapin is added to a finished cream sauce and the beaten eggs go in "just before serving," which is a thickening technique, not a cook. The dish as written assumes the meat arrived already scalded and picked, and the recipe specifies no temperature at any stage.
- Bones left in"Terrapin meat with bones cut in pieces" follows the period habit of retaining the small bones. Chopped turtle bone is sharp and splintery and would not pass muster in any modern service.
- If you want the flavour of the eraLook to a current recipe for a cream-and-Sherry chafing-dish stew built on chicken, veal sweetbreads from an inspected supplier, or crab. Read this page as a document of how the terrapin fishery worked, not as instructions.
Terrapin was a great American status dish from roughly the 1880s through the 1910s, ranked with canvasback duck and served at Delmonico's and at Washington political dinners. Named styles such as "Washington terrapin," "Maryland terrapin" and "Baltimore terrapin" circulated in the cookbooks of the period, differing mainly in how much cream, Sherry or Madeira went in and whether the eggs and entrails were included; how each name attached itself is not clear. Chesapeake Bay was the centre of the trade, and terrapin were graded and priced by size, with the largest counts commanding sums that put the dish out of ordinary reach. The fashion is generally credited with driving the diamondback's near-disappearance from much of its range, and the dish faded on its own terms: by the 1920s the supply had thinned and terrapin slid off American menus, with Prohibition's removal of the Sherry often cited as a further blow. That a cookery book like this one files terrapin with fish -- the page runs on into "Ways of Using Remnants of Cooked Fish" -- reflects the older habit of grouping what came out of the water, regardless of zoology.