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Chicken Terrapin

A savory sauce made with dark chicken, cream, butter, flour, egg yolks, mustard, cayenne, salt, and Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the dark meat with ½ cup cream or stock in a chafing dish.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon flour, and 3 egg yolks.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon dry mustard, ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper, and ¼ teaspoon salt mixed with ¼ cup cream or stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Let it simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

  2. Stir in ⅓ cup Madeira 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dark meat of cold chicken, turkey, or grouse
Provides the main body of the dish as tender, cut-up meat.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth texture as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat instead of running thin.
Madeira
Adds a sweet, fortified wine flavour that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Let it simmer without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but boiling can curdle them into a grainy texture, so the sauce must stay just below a boil once the yolks are added.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cream, butter, flour, egg, pepper. 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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