Home › Meats and Poultry › Lamb Terrapin
Lamb Terrapin
Take slices of the meat which have been left and cut into fine dice. Two cups of these dice will be required to feed a party of eight. Make a sauce in the chafing-dish, using two tablespoons of butter, one tablespoon of flour, one teaspoon of mustard, one tablespoon of currant jelly, one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, a dash of paprika and salt, one cup of white stock, a quarter cup of cream and the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs pressed through a potato ricer.
Beat this with a whisk till smooth, add the diced lamb, allow it to boil up, then sprinkle in the whites of the eggs cut fine and two tablespoons of sherry.
Serve on slices of buttered brown bread toast.
A chafing-dish supper built on leftover roast lamb, dressed in the sauce that belonged to terrapin stew. It comes together in about ten minutes, so have everything measured before the butter goes in.
- The hinge: the lamb is already cookedThe meat needs only to heat through in the sauce. "Allow it to boil up" means bring the pan back to a bubble and stop; held at a simmer, diced roast lamb turns dry and stringy.
- Chafing dish or saucepanA chafing dish is a shallow pan over a spirit lamp, and the point of it was cooking at the table. A wide skillet or a 2-quart saucepan over low heat behaves the same way. If you use a proper chafing dish, work over the direct flame rather than the water bath, or the sauce will not thicken.
- White stockA light stock, historically veal or chicken. Chicken stock is the direct substitute; go easy on the salt, since the Worcestershire carries salt of its own.
- MustardMost likely dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar, though the recipe does not specify. A teaspoon of powder is assertive; a teaspoon of prepared mustard would be much milder, so adjust if that is what you have.
- The egg-yolk thickeningThree hard-boiled yolks riced into a roux-based sauce is what makes this read as terrapin rather than as hash. They give body and a faint richness. Push them through a ricer or fine sieve — crumbled yolks stay grainy no matter how hard you whisk.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly, the standard accompaniment to lamb and mutton in this period. Redcurrant is still sold; a tablespoon is for sweet-tart balance against the Worcestershire, not for sweetness you should taste outright.
- Sherry at the endAdd off the heat or at the very last moment. Dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry, and not "cooking sherry," which is salted.
- Brown bread toastProbably a dark whole-meal or graham loaf, sliced and toasted, though steamed Boston brown bread was also served toasted and cannot be ruled out. Any dense wholewheat bread, toasted and buttered, does the job.
- YieldTwo cups of diced meat across eight people is a small portion by current standards — figure this as a light luncheon or supper for four to six, or serve eight with a salad alongside.
Terrapin — specifically the diamondback terrapin of the Chesapeake — was one of the great luxury foods of nineteenth-century American dining, stewed in cream with sherry, cayenne and sieved hard-boiled egg yolk in what was known as the Maryland style. That sauce became so recognizable that cooks began applying it to cheaper meats and calling the result terrapin anyway: veal terrapin, chicken terrapin, and here lamb terrapin, all of them ways of turning cold roast meat into something a hostess could serve without apology. The chafing dish is the other period marker. Around the turn of the century it was fashionable equipment for informal late suppers and bachelor entertaining, and cookbooks filled up with dishes like this one that could be assembled at the table in front of guests.