No. 1087

Terrapin, Ancient Style

Terrapene a l'Ancienne

Choose a six and a half inch terrapin, scald to remove the skin, and wrap it in several sheets of buttered paper; put it on a baking sheet and set it into a slow oven; it will take about an hour to cook; unwrap, and break the shell; remove the meats, suppress the gall-bag attached to the liver, also any spots found on the same, and cut it up into slices; take away the head, tail, claws, and white muscles on the four members, and then warm the terrapin in a good thick gravy (No. 405), season with salt, freshly ground pepper, cayenne, butter, adding some good sherry wine. Serve on a chafing dish.

← No. 1085 Terrapin a la Maryland or Delmonico Terrapin No. 1088 Terrapin, Maryland Club →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a reference entry for readers of Ranhofer rather than a recipe to cook. The animal it calls for is the diamondback terrapin, and taking one is now restricted or outright prohibited across most of its range.

The species is the problem"Terrapin" in nineteenth-century American cookery means Malaclemys terrapin, the diamondback of Atlantic and Gulf salt marshes. Commercial harvest collapsed the population and is now closed or tightly restricted in most states where the animal occurs; some prohibit possession, and international trade is controlled. A cook today has no ready lawful supply.
"Six and a half inch" is a shell measurementTerrapin were graded and priced by plastron or carapace length, and six to seven inches meant a mature female — precisely the size class whose removal does the most damage to a population. The sizing instruction is itself a record of why the fishery failed.
The gall bagRanhofer's insistence on suppressing the gall-bag and any spots on the liver is not fussiness. Ruptured gall taints the whole panful with an acrid bitterness that seasoning cannot cover. In this recipe the shell is broken only after the animal has been baked and the organs firmed.
Reptile handling carries its own riskTurtles are a well-documented reservoir of Salmonella, carried on the shell and in the gut. Scalding, breaking the shell and dressing the meats at the kitchen table is a raw-reptile handling operation of the kind that public health guidance now specifically discourages.
Reading the method, not following itA "slow oven" in The Epicurean means gentle sustained heat, and the buttered paper wrapping keeps the meats from drying while the shell steams. Gravy No. 405 is Ranhofer's thickened brown gravy, given elsewhere in the book.
If you want the dishThere is no substitute preparation offered here. Cooks drawn to the flavour profile — brown gravy, cayenne, butter and a heavy pour of sherry, finished in a chafing dish — should look to a current recipe using a farmed or otherwise lawful meat.

A Little History

Terrapin was the high-water mark of American luxury dining between roughly 1850 and 1910, and Charles Ranhofer gives it a whole run of numbered recipes because Delmonico's, where he was chef, largely set the fashion. Maryland and Delaware supplied the trade, packed live in barrels and shipped by rail; the birds-and-terrapin course, terrapin followed by canvasback duck, was the standard signature of an expensive New York or Baltimore dinner, and Baltimore's Maryland Club lent its name to one of the best-known versions. Calling this one à l'ancienne, "in the old style," may point to the whole-baked treatment — wrapped in paper and cooked in its shell — though the phrase is not self-explaining. The vogue is what finished the animal: demand outran the marshes, prices for the best grades climbed to extraordinary heights, and regulation followed piecemeal, with size limits and closed seasons preceding by decades the comprehensive commercial bans that eventually closed the fishery these recipes had helped create.