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Pea Timbales

Pea Timbales are baked pea cakes made with butter, eggs, and seasonings, served with a white sauce of whole peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pea Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the peas

  1. Drain and rinse the peas.

  2. Rub the peas through a strainer.

Make the custard

  1. Add the melted butter, beaten eggs, and seasonings to the strained peas.

  2. Pour the mixture into buttered molds set in a pan of hot water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm, about 20 minutes.

  2. Serve with a white sauce containing the remaining whole peas.

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 + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when baked, giving the timbales their firm structure.
Canned peas
Provide the main body, flavor, and color of the timbales once puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, more tender texture to the set custard.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Setting the molds in hot water moderates the oven heat around the custard, so it sets gently and evenly instead of overcooking, curdling, or puffing and cracking at the edges.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, egg, butter, pepper. 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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