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Chicken Terrapin

A dish of boiled chicken mixed with cream, egg yolks, butter, peppers, salt, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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, then remove the skin and cut it into pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the chicken with cream or milk and heat over low heat.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the mashed egg yolks, butter, red and white pepper, and salt.

  2. Add this mixture to the chicken and cream, stirring well.

  3. Pour in ⅓ cup of sherry and mix thoroughly.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in another ⅓ cup of sherry before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and meaty bulk of the dish.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich texture to the chicken.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the mixture to thicken and enrich the creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a mild sweetness-acidity balance to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the sherry after heating. Alcohol is volatile and its flavour fades with prolonged heat, so the second portion is stirred in off the heat to keep its aroma. Heating the egg-and-cream mixture too hard can also cause it to curdle or turn grainy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, egg, butter, 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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