Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Dressed As Terrapins

A chicken dish simmered with butter, flour, egg yolk, Madeira wine, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Dressed As Terrapins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until done, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Place the chicken in a stew-pan with boiling water.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, flour, and egg yolk until smooth.

  2. Add the butter mixture to the chicken in two parts, stirring well.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the Madeira wine and serve hot.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies and enriches the sauce, helping it set creamy.
Madeira wine
Adds acidity and a deep, caramel-like aroma to the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the butter mixture. Adding the butter, flour, and egg yolk mixture in two parts while stirring keeps the egg yolk from scrambling and helps the sauce thicken evenly and stay smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes