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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish with sherry, eggs, and optional sweetbreads.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken, remove the skin, and cut it into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream, butter, flour, pepper, and salt. Stir until thickened.

  2. Add the chicken to the mixture and remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the sherry wine and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Serve

  1. Return to heat and warm in the shells in which it will be served.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together891 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce as it heats and stirs.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce and gives it body and richness.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, mild texture to the finished filling.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the rich cream sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour must be cooked with the butter and cream while stirring constantly, or it stays starchy and lumpy. Once the sauce has thickened, the chicken and sherry are added off the heat, so the sherry stays bright and the sauce does not split or curdle from overheating.

“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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