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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish with egg yolks, butter, milk, spices, and sherry or madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Prepare

  1. Boil the chickens until tender, then let them cool and cut into small pieces.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and set aside.

  3. Rub together the flour and butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk until boiling, then stir in the butter and flour mixture.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten yolks, salt, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg.

Combine and serve

  1. Return the saucepan to the heat and stir in the chopped chicken, heating without boiling.

  2. Before serving, stir in the sherry or madeira wine.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Flour and butter 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

Chickens
Provide the main meat, cooked until tender and then cut into pieces.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it with richness and a smooth texture.
Flour
Combined with butter to thicken the milk into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps thicken the sauce with flour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and a deeper, aromatic flavor at the end.

The step that matters

Return the chicken without boiling. Once the egg yolks are in, high heat can curdle the sauce. Heating gently without boiling keeps the sauce smooth while the chicken warms through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, butter, milk, pepper, 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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