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Mock Terrapin

A casserole of cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs, milk, butter, and seasonings, simmered until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mock Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the cold chicken and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Let it boil and serve 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Supplies the main protein and the meaty bulk of the dish.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that flour thickens into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour. Flour thickens milk by swelling its starch as the liquid heats. Stir the flour in well and keep the milk hot so it blends smoothly instead of forming lumps, which would leave the sauce 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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