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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish with eggs, mace, cloves, sherry, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Chicken Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine flour and butter over moderate heat.

  2. Add cream, ground mace, ground cloves, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Heat until warm.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in chopped egg whites and yolks mixed with cream.

  2. Heat until just boiling.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Adjust sherry to taste.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the dish as the main protein.
Hard boiled eggs
Thicken the sauce and add richness and body when heated gently.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce base.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the sauce base.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg mixture and heat until just boiling. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but overheating can make them curdle and grainy. Bring the sauce only to a boil and remove it from heat promptly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, flour, sherry, butter, cream, clove):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, sherry, butter, cream, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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