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Chicken a LA Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish with eggs, flour, stock, milk, Madeira wine, and butter, served over brown toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken a LA Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a large stewpan.

  2. Add the browned flour and stir well.

  3. Pour in the scalded chicken stock and milk, mixing thoroughly.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the minced chicken, sieved eggs, salt, cayenne, and mace.

  2. Cook slowly for 30 minutes on low heat.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the Madeira wine.

  4. Serve on brown toast.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Cold boiled chicken
Forms the bulk of the dish, providing the main substance and meaty texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Thicken the creamy mixture and add richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce, with browning adding a nutty flavour.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding moisture and softness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma, rounding out the savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce slowly over low heat. Gentle heat lets the flour thicken the milk and stock evenly without scorching or lumping. Scorched dairy turns bitter and sticks to the pan, so stir often and keep the heat low.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, milk, madeira wine, pepper, butter. 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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