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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken salad with eggs, butter, cream, sherry, mace, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Rub the butter and flour together in a saucepan.

  2. Add the ground mace, salt, cayenne, and cream to the sauce.

  3. Place over medium heat.

Combine and finish

  1. Mix the finely chopped egg whites with the chicken and add to the sauce.

  2. Rub the egg yolks to a smooth paste with some cream.

  3. Stir the paste into the mixture.

  4. Cook until it comes to a boil.

  5. Add the sherry.

  6. Serve immediately in timbale cases or cups.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sherry + buttertop 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).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and body.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and thicken the sauce, while chopped whites add body.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, held together by the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk paste. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating when heated. If the mixture boils after the yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so the sauce should be heated gently and only brought to a boil once the yolks are well blended.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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