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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy stew of dark chicken, turkey, or shrimp thickened with butter, flour, egg yolks, mustard, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. In a chafing dish, combine the dark meat with the cream or stock and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour into a smooth paste.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks, dry mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt with a little cream or stock.

  4. Add this mixture to the boiling meat.

Finish and serve

  1. Let it simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

  2. 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dark meat of cold chicken, turkey, or shrimp
Provides the main body of the dish as the protein base.
Cream or stock
Supplies the liquid that makes the dish moist and gives the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps smooth the flour paste.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the boiling meat. Egg yolks can curdle if they get too hot. Keep the mixture from boiling after it goes in, so it thickens smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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