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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish with eggs, butter, flour, milk, wine, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter with the flour until smooth.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil, then add the butter mixture.

Combine and finish

  1. Combine the chopped chicken and hard boiled eggs in a separate bowl.

  2. Pour the hot milk mixture over the chicken and eggs, and mix well.

  3. Heat thoroughly, then stir in the wine.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the milk sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the milk with the butter so the sauce holds together.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that binds the chicken and eggs.
Boiled chicken
Provides the main meat and substance of the dish.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the mixture as chopped pieces.
Wine
Adds acidity and a bright flavor to the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk mixture to the chicken and eggs. The flour-thickened sauce must be hot and smooth before it meets the chicken and eggs; lumps or a cooled sauce will not thicken evenly and the mixture can turn thin or grainy.

“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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