Name: Chicken Dressed As Terrapin
Ingredients: young chickens; ½ cup butter; 1 beaten egg; salt; pepper; 1 teaspoon powdered thyme; 2 hard-boiled eggs, coarsely minced; ⅓ cup wine

Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Dressed As Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Clean and cut the chickens into pieces.
Place them in a stewpan with enough water to cook.
Cook until tender.

Finish and serve

Stir in the butter and beaten egg.
Season with salt, pepper, and thyme.
Add the minced hard-boiled eggs and wine. Boil once.
Serve with jelly.

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.

Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,349 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chicken + thymetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,173 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Beaten egg: Thickens the sauce gently as it sets with heat.
Wine: Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.

Swap the thyme

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

Thymethe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well
Rosemaryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, egg, pepper, 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.