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Dessert

Timbale Ca^es

A small fried cake made from egg yolk, flour, milk, salt, and olive oil, cooked in a heated iron mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Timbale Ca^es

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolk with salt and olive oil until combined.

  2. Add milk and flour, and beat until smooth.

Fry

  1. Heat deep fat in a pan until it smokes.

  2. Dip the timbale iron into the hot fat to heat it.

  3. Fill the iron with batter to half its depth, then immerse it into the hot fat.

  4. Fry until crisp and brown.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Olive + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,828 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Flour + olivetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter, giving the cakes structure and a golden colour.
Flour
Provides starch and gluten that set during frying, giving the cakes their firm, crisp shape.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates into a smooth batter that can flow into the iron.
Olive oil
Adds fat that enriches the batter and helps keep the cooked cakes tender.

The step that matters

Heating the iron in the hot fat before dipping. A hot iron helps the batter set on contact instead of sliding off or soaking up fat. Preheating the iron in the smoking fat helps the batter release cleanly and fry evenly to a crisp, brown shell.

“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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