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Timbales of Chicken

A steamed chicken dish with mushrooms, stock, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Timbales of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the timbale

  1. Mince the white meat of the chicken.

  2. Add salt, cayenne pepper, onion juice, parsley, flour, egg white, mushrooms, and ½ cup stock to the minced chicken.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine 1 cup cream, ⅓ cup stock, ½ cup mushrooms, 2 tablespoons flour, 2 tablespoons butter, and 1 cup milk.

  2. In the stock, mix in the milk, creamed butter, and flour, then add mushrooms.

  3. Cook the sauce for about 15 minutes, then stir in the cream.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 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. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 body of the timbale, setting into a firm, sliceable texture as it steams.
Egg white
Beaten stiff, it lightens the mixture and helps the timbale set with a delicate structure.
Flour
Starch thickens the sauce when heated and helps bind the timbale mixture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to both the timbale and the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.
Butter
Contributes fat for richness and flavor in the timbale and the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce before adding the cream. Flour starch thickens the sauce only when it is heated long enough to swell, so the sauce needs its full simmer. Cream is added afterward so it stays smooth and does not separate or thin out under long heat.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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