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Chicken Timbale

Chicken timbale is a baked chicken dish with eggs, cream, and seasonings, served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Timbale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the timbale

  1. Chop the chicken meat using a meat chopper until finely minced.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chicken with 5 eggs, adding them one at a time and heating thoroughly.

  3. Add salt, pepper, celery salt, and mushrooms (if using).

  4. In a well-buttered mold, decorate with slices of hard-boiled egg or truffles.

  5. Pour the chicken mixture into the mold and cover with buttered paper.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Cook in a pan of hot water for 30 to 45 minutes until the center feels firm. Do not let the water boil during cooking.

  2. For the stock, place chicken bones in cold water to cover, season with soup seasonings, and cook slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the stock to reduce to 1 cup.

  4. In a saucepan, combine ½ cup cream with 2 tablespoons flour mixed into 2 tablespoons melted butter, and season to taste.

  5. Pour the sauce around the timbale when ready to serve.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,006 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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 when cooked gently.
Eggs
Bind the minced chicken and set when heated, giving the timbale its firm structure.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce, giving it a smooth, silky body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream sauce so it coats the timbale.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the sauce and lightly coats the mold.

The step that matters

Keep the water below a boil during baking. Gentle, even heat lets the egg-bound chicken set smoothly. Boiling water can make the custard-like mixture porous, rough, or cracked.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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