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Chicken Dressed As Terrapin

A chicken dish simmered with butter, egg, thyme, wine, and served with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 and cook

  1. Clean and cut the chickens into pieces.

  2. Place them in a stewpan with just enough water to cook.

  3. When tender, stir in the butter and beaten egg.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and thyme.

  2. Add the minced hard-boiled eggs and wine.

  3. Boil once and 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.

  1. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + thymetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  5. 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 cooked chicken.
Beaten egg
Thickens the sauce slightly as it cooks and binds it together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, minced texture to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the butter and eggs.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the egg should be stirred in off the boil over gentle heat. Boiling it vigorously can curdle the sauce into lumps.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. 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.

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