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Chicken Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish with butter, flour, sherry wine, and hard‑boiled eggs, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the boiled chicken and cut it into small pieces.

Make the filling

  1. In a skillet, combine the chicken, cream, butter, and flour.

  2. Season with salt and red pepper.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Stir in the sherry wine and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in patty shells or on 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. 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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together891 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

Boiled chicken
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides the main substance and protein.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the mixture a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, helping the sauce feel rich and silky.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter into a stable, spoonable sauce.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the creamy sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Flour needs to reach a boil in the cream and butter to fully thicken and lose its raw starchy taste. Boiling too gently leaves the sauce thin, while overheating can make cream separate.

“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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