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Chicken a LA Terrapin

A creamy chicken dish with sherry, eggs, and butter, topped with breadcrumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the chicken pieces and cream in a saucepan and simmer for a few minutes.

  2. Cream together the butter and flour, then moisten with a little milk and season with salt and Cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the butter mixture to the chicken and cook until thick.

  4. Stir in the sherry and the chopped hard-boiled eggs, then remove from heat.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture into individual shells or baking dishes.

  2. Top with bread crumbs and bits of butter.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 main body of the dish, providing protein and substance to the filling.
Cream
Creates a rich, smooth sauce that carries the chicken and thickens with cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as it cooks with the butter and cream.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the filling.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a slight acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Add the butter mixture and cook until thick. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid long enough to swell and thicken fully; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce. Stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps from forming.

“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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