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Chicken Terrapin

A savory dish of chicken mixed with a creamy mustard sauce and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the sauce

  1. Rub the egg yolks with butter, flour, and seasonings to a paste.

  2. Heat the cream in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the egg yolk mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chicken and cook until smoking hot.

  2. Stir in the wine.

  3. Serve.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dark meat of chicken or turkey
Provides the main body of the dish, tender meat cooked through in the sauce.
Cream
Forms the rich base of the sauce, adding moisture and a smooth, creamy texture.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into a paste, they thicken the sauce and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps bind the yolk paste with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body when combined with the fat and cream.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, rounding out the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if the cream is too hot or the mixture is added too quickly. Stirring constantly and adding the paste gradually keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cream, butter, flour, egg, pepper, sherry. 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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