No. 1090

Stewed Terrapin with Madeira Wine

Ragout de Terrapene au Madere

After the terrapin have been cut up, fry them in butter, then dredge over a little flour that has been browned in the oven. Fry once more for a few minutes, moisten with half white wine and half broth (No. 194a), season with salt and pepper, and let simmer and despumate for twenty minutes; finish cooking in the oven for thirty or forty minutes longer, and just when prepared to serve, add a little good Sherry or Madeira wine.

← No. 1089 Cutlets of Terrapin and Croquettes, Cream Sa Terrapin No. 1090a Terrapin a la Trenton →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a stew of diamondback terrapin, the estuarine turtle that Gilded Age restaurants ate nearly out of existence. The technique is straightforward French braising; the problem is the animal.

The speciesMalaclemys terrapin, the diamondback terrapin, is protected to varying degrees across most of its range. Most Atlantic and Gulf states now prohibit or heavily restrict commercial harvest, and the species has been listed on CITES Appendix II since 2013, which controls international trade in it.
Why the ban existsWhy the restrictions exist -- demand of exactly this kind was part of it. Hotel and club appetite in the late nineteenth century is generally credited with depleting the Chesapeake and the Carolina sounds, and populations have stayed low under later pressures as well. The recipe is a record of that demand, not a thing to repeat.
Preparation the text assumes"After the terrapin have been cut up" hides a great deal: period instructions have the live animal scalded and skinned, the gall bladder and sand bag removed intact, and the liver and eggs reserved. A ruptured gall bladder was held to ruin the whole dish.
Pathogen riskTurtles and their offal are a well-documented reservoir of Salmonella. Handling live or freshly killed chelonians in a domestic kitchen is the reason the US has restricted small turtle sales since the 1970s.
Browned flourFlour dried in the oven until nut-coloured before use; it thickens less than raw flour but adds colour and a toasted note. The recipe gives no oven temperature.
DespumateAn older kitchen verb meaning to skim the scum and fat that rise as a sauce simmers. Ranhofer uses it constantly; it is a skimming instruction, not a technique of its own.
If you want the flavourUse a current, legally sourced recipe for a Madeira-finished braise of another meat. Nothing here should be adapted to terrapin.

A Little History

Terrapin was the great American luxury food of the nineteenth century, ranked with canvasback duck and Lynnhaven oysters, and Charles Ranhofer gave it a whole section of The Epicurean (1894). The Chesapeake diamondback was the prized stock, sold by the dozen and graded by the length of the shell; Baltimore and Philadelphia clubs differed over whether cream and egg yolks belonged in the sauce, while Ranhofer's French kitchen leaned instead on browned flour, stock and a finish of Madeira or Sherry poured in off the heat so the wine stayed aromatic. The dish is also often cited as the reason terrapin collapsed: what is traditionally said to have been slave and waterman food in the eighteenth century became a hotel delicacy in the nineteenth, and harvest pressure did the rest. By the 1920s the fashion had faded, owing to rising prices, Prohibition and scarcity alike, leaving recipes like this one as an account of how the fashion was cooked.