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Mock Terrapin

A casserole of diced chicken or veal with egg yolks, egg whites, white sauce, sherry, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and sherry work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 891 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Mock Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chicken, egg yolks, egg whites, salt, and cayenne with the white sauce in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring gently.

  3. Add the sherry wine and mix well 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. Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together891 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,496 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked chicken or veal
Provides the main protein and meaty bulk of the filling.
White sauce
Binds the filling and adds creamy moisture so the mixture stays soft.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the sauce with richness and help thicken it as they warm.
Sherry wine
Adds a light acidic, aromatic flavor that brightens the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring gently. Heating the white sauce with egg yolks needs moderate heat and gentle stirring; too much heat can curdle the sauce or make the egg proteins go 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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