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Chicken Terrapin

A chicken stew with broth, milk, eggs, flour, butter, and sherry, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender.

  2. Save 2 cups of the broth.

  3. Cut the chicken into small dice.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the chicken and broth in a saucepan.

  2. Cook for a few minutes.

  3. Add the milk and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

  5. Season with salt.

  6. Stir in the sherry or Madeira wine.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on toast.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

Flour and butter 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

Chicken
Provides the main body and protein of the dish once cooked and diced.
Chicken broth
Supplies the liquid base that carries flavour and keeps the mixture moist.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the mixture as they are stirred in.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, spoonable sauce with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour thicken the sauce smoothly.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid so starch granules swell fully. Adding it raw or in clumps leaves a pasty taste and lumps, while gentle simmering lets the sauce thicken evenly.

“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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