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Terrapin, Newburgh
Plunge a large diamond-back terrapin in boiling water for two minutes, take it up and with a coarse towel pull off the skin from the head, neck and feet. Place the terrapin in a saucepan with two gallons boiling water and one tablespoon salt and let boil for one hour, or until the feet are soft to the touch. Lift it up with a skimmer and let drain for ten minutes. Remove both shells, cut off the nails with a pair of scissors, remove the intestines and gall bag, from the liver, being very careful not to break the gall bag, otherwise terrapin will be spoiled. Cut the liver into small squares and keep on a plate with the eggs until required.
Cut all the meat and bones of the terrapin into half-inch pieces and place in a small saucepan with a gill sherry, two tablespoons port and two tablespoons brandy. Tie in a small cheesecloth half a sprig thyme, one crushed bay leaf, one clove, a blade mace and twelve whole spice and add to the terrapin. Season with a heavy teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne pepper. Cover the pan and let gently cook for forty-five minutes. Take up the cloth with the herbs, add one truffle and cut into very small squares the livers and eggs. Mix in a bowl three egg yolks, two gills cream, half ounce fresh butter and the juice of quarter of a sound lemon, then add to the terrapin; gently mix with a wooden spoon until well thickened, being careful not to allow to boil. Transfer to a chafing dish or a silver soup tureen and serve.
This is a period luxury dish built on a turtle that can no longer be bought or taken. The notes below are for reading the recipe, not for cooking it.
- The animal itselfThe diamond-back terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) was hunted to commercial collapse by the early twentieth century, largely because of dishes like this one. It is now listed on CITES Appendix II and its capture, sale, or possession is restricted or outright prohibited across most of its range on the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts. There is no lawful supermarket equivalent.
- Reptile slaughter and handlingTurtles and other reptiles are a well-documented reservoir for Salmonella, which is carried in the gut and on the shell and skin rather than acquired through spoilage. The recipe's scalding, skinning, and evisceration steps take place on the same worktop as the liver and eggs that are later folded into a sauce that is deliberately never boiled.
- The gall bagThe warning not to break the gall bladder is the hinge of the original, and it is real: spilled bile permanently embitters the meat. It is also a reminder that this recipe assumes a cook trained in butchering an animal almost nobody now handles.
- The custard finishThree egg yolks and two gills of cream are stirred in off the boil, and the instruction is explicit that the mixture must not boil. That is correct technique for a Newburg sauce and it is also why nothing added at that stage is ever pasteurised.
- Reading the measuresA gill is half a cup, so the sherry is 4 fl oz and the cream 8 fl oz. A saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon, which makes the cayenne about half a teaspoon. "Twelve whole spice" most likely means twelve whole allspice berries, though the phrase was also used loosely for whole spices in general; a blade of mace is a single strip of the aril from a nutmeg.
- If you want the sauceNewburg is a cream, sherry, and egg-yolk sauce first made famous with lobster and later applied to crab and shrimp. Use a current recipe for one of those and leave the terrapin in the book.
Terrapin was among the outstanding American luxury foods of the nineteenth century, the counterpart to canvasback duck on Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York menus, and Chesapeake terrapin in particular commanded very high prices at public dinners. Newburg treatment — sherry, cream, egg yolks, cayenne, a little brandy and Madeira or port — is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, where it was first made famous with lobster; applying it to terrapin was a way of dressing an already expensive ingredient in the most fashionable sauce of the moment, though Baltimore cooks tended to argue that good terrapin needed nothing but butter and cream. The wild population did not survive the fashion, and terrapin passed out of the general repertoire within a generation or two of this recipe being printed.