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Chicken Terrapin

A savory chicken stew with sweetbread, butter, flour, cream, egg yolks, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish or over hot water, melt the butter.

  2. Add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Gradually add the thin cream, stirring until smooth.

Combine and finish

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then add the chicken and sweetbread.

  2. Heat through, then stir in the beaten egg yolks and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Finally, add the sherry or madeira and serve.

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 + creamtop 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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

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

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 sauce and carries flavor as the base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the cream with the butter into a smooth, stable sauce.
Thin cream
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and adds richness and moisture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce further and give it a smooth, creamy texture when gently heated.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and a fortified wine aroma that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly so the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly instead of turning 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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