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Chicken Terrapin

A savory dish of boiled chicken, liver, cream, butter, flour, eggs, and sherry.

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

  1. Cut the cold boiled chicken and liver into small pieces, removing skin, fat, and gristle.

  2. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and stir them in.

Cook

  1. In a pan, combine the chicken, liver, cream, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Add salt to taste and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, stir in the sherry.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

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

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

Cold boiled chicken
Provides the main body of the dish and its meaty texture.
Chicken liver
Adds richness and a deeper, more savory flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the mixture a smooth, silky body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and rounds out the flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter mixture as it heats, giving body to the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Stir in the sherry once boiling. Alcohol evaporates slowly with heat, so adding sherry at the boil and then stopping cooking keeps its aroma. Overheating for long can dull that flavor and can also cause the cream sauce to break or separate.

“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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