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Chicken a LA Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish thickened with corn starch and flavored with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,666 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken as for salad.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 cup of cream and thicken it with 1 teaspoon of corn starch.

  2. Remove from heat and add the chicken and the beaten hard-boiled egg.

  3. Stir in the sherry.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Sherry + corntop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a sweet, nutty aroma to the sauce.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds body and richness to the sauce when stirred in.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with corn starch. Corn starch must be heated in the cream to swell and thicken it. Adding it cold or letting the mixture boil too hard can leave lumps or a thin, grainy sauce.

“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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