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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish served hot in terrapin dishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and sherry work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 891 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Chicken Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the diced cold roast chicken and sherry, mixing well.

  2. Serve in terrapin dishes with covers to keep 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. Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together891 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Pepper + chickentop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a custard-like sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Forms the rich base of the sauce and adds moisture and body.
Roast chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk, held moist in the thickened sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce over low heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir constantly and keep the heat low until the sauce coats a spoon.

“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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