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Chicken Terrapin

A dish of boiled chicken mixed with butter, flour, egg yolks, and Madeira or Sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until perfectly tender, then pick it into small pieces.

  2. In a porcelain stew-pan, combine the chicken with boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together the butter and flour until smooth, then beat in the egg yolks.

  2. Add the butter mixture to the hot chicken gradually to prevent lumps.

  3. Boil for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the Madeira or Sherry wine.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 with fat, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture so it blends smoothly into the hot chicken.
Madeira or sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Add the butter mixture to the hot chicken gradually. Adding the butter and flour mixture slowly while stirring lets it disperse evenly. Adding it all at once can cause lumps, and egg yolks can curdle if the mixture overheats, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

“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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