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Chicken Terrapin

A dish of diced boiled chicken and eggs in a cream sauce with butter, flour, sherry, and seasonings.

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. Heat the butter and flour together in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cream and bring to a boil.

Finish the dish

  1. Stir in the chicken and seasonings, then allow to simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the eggs and sherry, then serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 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).

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

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs flavor from the creamy sauce as it simmers.
Eggs
Add richness and a soft, tender texture to the finished dish.
Cream
Creates the rich, smooth body of the sauce and adds moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and cream.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a light acidity that balances the rich cream.

The step that matters

Simmer the chicken gently in the cream. Once the cream is at a boil, a gentle simmer keeps it smooth and stops it from scorching or separating on the bottom of the pan, while the chicken slowly takes on the seasoning.

Swap the mace

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

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

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