Terrapin
O CLEAN AND PREPARE TERRAPIN FOR USE-If the large southern variety is used, cut off the head and let the terrapin lie in cold water one-half an hour, then drop it into boiling water and cook for ten minutes. Pour off the water, and cover the terrapin with cold water, letting it stand until cool enough to handle easily; then take it up, and with a towel rub the nails and black skin from the legs. Wash the terrapin carefully, place it in a stewpan with boiling water to cover, and cook until the flesh is tender, which will be when the joints of the legs can be broken with a slight pressure, and the shell separates easily. Remove from the water, and after it has cooled a little, place the terrapin on its back, with the head away from you, and loosen and remove the under shell. The liver, gall-bladder and sand-bag will be found near the head end, the gall being attached to the left side of the liver. Take out the gall as you would that of a chicken, being careful not to break it. All that remains is used for food. Take out the eggs, if there are any, remove the slight membrane around them, and drop into cold water. Cut all the meat very fine, saving any water that may collect in the shells. The terrapin is now ready to use in a stew or in other ways. It is commonly served stewed.
TERRAPIN À LA MARYLAND-Mash the yolks of six hard boiled eggs and mix them with two tablespoons of butter. Put one pint of cream in a double boiler; when it is scalded, stir in the egg and butter till smooth; season with salt, cayenne, a speck of allspice and nutmeg. Add two terrapins finely cut and simmer for ten minutes. Just at the moment of serving add two tablespoons of sherry or Madeira; serve very hot. Terrapin is often served in individual metal cups or saucepans with covers.
This recipe cannot be followed today, and the obstacle is the animal itself rather than the cooking. The points below explain what has changed since 1911.
- The "large southern variety" is the diamondback terrapinThe "large southern variety" is most likely the diamondback terrapin, Malaclemys terrapin, the brackish-water turtle that made this dish famous and that was hunted to commercial collapse in the early twentieth century. Commercial harvest is now prohibited or tightly restricted through most of its range, and the species was listed on CITES Appendix II in 2013. A home cook is unlikely to find any lawful supply.
- Snapping turtle is not a substitute hereWhere freshwater turtle harvest is still permitted it is governed by state licences, seasons and size limits, and the flesh carries advisories for mercury and organochlorine contaminants because turtles are long-lived bottom feeders. Substituting does not make the method above appropriate.
- Live-boiling as writtenThe killing method — The instruction is to remove the head and then drop the animal into boiling water. This does not meet any current standard for humane slaughter.
- Reptile-borne SalmonellaTurtles are a well-documented reservoir of Salmonella, which is why the sale of small pet turtles has been restricted in the United States since 1975. Dressing one in a domestic kitchen spreads contamination across sink, towels and work surfaces; the recipe's step of rubbing skin and nails off with a towel is exactly the wrong handling.
- The gall bladderThe original warns against breaking it, and it is the most delicate step in the procedure. It is also a step no modern cook has any occasion to practise.
- The sauce is a scalded custardThe sauce is thickened with hard-boiled yolk and butter rather than flour — cream held in a double boiler will not tolerate much more than a bare simmer, and ten minutes of simmering with the meat leaves little margin before it breaks. Even setting the terrapin aside, this is not a forgiving base.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe for a creamed stew of a farmed or commercially available meat. The Maryland seasoning here — yolk-and-butter thickening, cayenne, a speck of allspice and nutmeg, sherry or Madeira off the heat — is the transferable part.
Terrapin stew was the high-water mark of nineteenth-century American luxury cooking, and diamondback terrapin from the Chesapeake was its most prized form; Baltimore restaurants and hotel dining rooms built reputations on it, and covered individual metal dishes of the kind mentioned at the end of the recipe were made for serving it. That a general-purpose household manual like the Butterick book of 1911 included full butchering directions says something about how far the ambition of middle-class entertaining reached at the time — and its appearance here is close to the end of the story, since demand had already pushed wild terrapin populations to the point where prices climbed out of reach and protective legislation followed. The dish survives today mainly as a name on old menus and in the Maryland flavour profile that outlived the ingredient.