Why it works: Chicken and sherry work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 891 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓
Mock Terrapin
Ingredients
Directions
Make the filling
Combine the white sauce, chopped chicken, and the yolks and whites of the hard-boiled eggs in a saucepan.
Add the salt and cayenne pepper.
Cook for two minutes over low heat.
Stir in the sherry wine.
Serve
Serve.
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.
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Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together891 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,107 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
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Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,066 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Chicken + winetop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,496 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cooked chicken
- Provides the main body and meaty texture of the filling.
- Hard-boiled eggs
- Add richness and a soft, thickening body to the creamy filling.
- White sauce
- Forms the creamy base that binds the chicken and eggs together.
- Sherry wine
- Adds a mellow, slightly sweet and nutty aroma to the sauce.
The step that matters
Cook for two minutes over low heat. Gentle heat warms the filling through without boiling it, which could cause the cream-based white sauce to curdle or separate and the egg to toughen.
“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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