Why it works: Chicken and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 891 recipes mention both. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Make the sauce
Melt the butter in a chafing dish.
Add the flour and cook for one minute.
Stir in the cream and cook for three minutes.
Finish and serve
Add the chicken and warm through.
Stir in the Sherry wine.
Mix a little cold water with the slightly beaten yolks.
Pour the yolks gradually into the cooking mixture.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Chicken + sherrytop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together891 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Cream + buttertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together41,494 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sherry + winetop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together219 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
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Butter + winetop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together8,517 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Butter + sherrytop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together3,505 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cream
- Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth texture.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the sauce and add richness when gently heated.
- Butter
- Provides fat and flavour as the base for the sauce.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
- Sherry wine
- Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the cream.
The step that matters
Pour the yolks gradually into the cooking mixture. Egg yolks scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Mixing them with a little cold water and adding them slowly lets them blend in and thicken the sauce smoothly.
“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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