Name: Timbales
Ingredients: cylindrical molds (2.625 inches wide by 2.125 inches high); fresh unmelted butter; truffles; tongue; pistachios; forcemeat; consomme

Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Butter the insides of the cylindrical molds with fresh unmelted butter.
Decorate the molds with fanciful cuts of truffles, tongue, and pistachios.
Finely chop and dry truffles, tongue, lobster coral, and pistachios in the air.
Fill the molds with forcemeat, with or without a salpicon.
Poach the filled molds.
Invert onto a dish with a little consomme and serve the accompanying sauce separately.

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.

Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Truffle + pistachiotop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together92 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Butter + pistachiotop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together587 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).