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Terrapin Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces flavored with allspice, cloves, mace, butter, egg yolks, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Terrapin Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the chicken pieces in a pot.

  2. Add ground allspice, cloves, mace, salt, and pepper.

  3. Work the butter into the yolks of the hard boiled eggs.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the chicken and cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Serve in a tureen and add sherry before serving.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the body of the dish and provides the main protein for the stew.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed with butter to enrich and thicken the sauce, adding richness and body.
Butter
Blended into the yolks to add fat, richness and a smooth texture.
Sherry
Added just before serving to contribute sweetness and aroma.

The step that matters

Combine the egg mixture with the chicken and cook for 10 minutes. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or turn grainy if the heat is too high or they cook too long. Keep the heat gentle and stir so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, allspice, clove, pepper, butter, egg, 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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