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Swedish Timbales

A batter of flour, milk, eggs, salt, sugar, and oil cooked in a timbale iron until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Swedish Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the milk to the eggs and mix well.

  3. Pour this mixture onto the flour and beat to a smooth batter.

  4. Add the salt, sugar, and salad oil, then beat for two minutes.

Fry the timbales

  1. Heat the timbale iron in a kettle of hot fat for about two minutes.

  2. Fill a cup two-thirds full with the batter.

  3. When the iron is hot, dip it into the batter and let it cling to the sides.

  4. Immerse the iron in hot fat and cook until golden 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that sets around the iron as it fries.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and brown when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a smooth, pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Dipping the hot iron into the batter. The iron must be hot before dipping so the batter sets on contact and clings to the sides. If the iron is cool, the batter slides off and the timbale fails to form.

“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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