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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken and egg dish thickened with browned flour and butter, finished with Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the browned flour and stir until combined.

  3. Gradually add the scalded milk and chicken stock, stirring until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the minced chicken, sieved eggs, and seasonings.

  2. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the Madeira wine and serve over toast.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid.
Rich milk
Forms the creamy body of the sauce along with the stock.
Chicken stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to the sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the mixture as they are sieved in.
Cold boiled chicken
Provides the main substance and meaty texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Gradually add the scalded milk and chicken stock. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour mixture smooth, so lumps do not form and the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, flour, milk, pepper, butter, madeira wine):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, milk, pepper, butter, madeira wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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