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Terrapin Chicken

A chicken dish simmered with butter, flour, egg yolk, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Terrapin Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the chicken as you would for a salad.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine the chicken with boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, flour, and egg yolk until smooth.

  2. Add the butter mixture to the chicken in two parts, stirring well after each addition.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the Madeira wine.

  6. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies and thickens the sauce, giving it body as it heats.
Flour
Thickens the liquid, helping the sauce hold together.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic depth and a subtly sweet, fortified flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the butter mixture to the chicken. Adding the egg yolk mixture to hot liquid all at once can scramble it. Adding it in two parts and stirring well after each helps it blend smoothly and thicken evenly.

“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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