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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken stew with butter, flour, sherry wine, and hard‑boiled eggs.

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 the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then let it cool.

  2. Remove the skin and cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a porcelain-lined stewpan, combine the chicken and cream.

  2. Mix the butter and flour until creamy, then add to the chicken and cream.

  3. Cook over moderate heat, stirring carefully until thick.

  4. Season with red pepper and coarse sea salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in sherry wine and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Serve very hot.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the dish, cooked until tender before being cut into pieces.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, and thickens with the flour as the mixture cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture when worked with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the cream and chicken mixture as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Hard boiled eggs
Add texture and a soft, rich bite stirred into the finished dish.

The step that matters

Cook over moderate heat, stirring carefully until thick. Flour thickens cream only as its starch swells in heat. Heat that is too high or stirring that is too rough can scorch the cream on the pan base or break the sauce, so gentle, steady stirring over moderate heat gives a smooth, thick result.

“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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