Skip to main content
Dessert

Canned Coen Timbales

A baked bread crumb and pepper mixture shaped into timbales.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canned Coen Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Mix white pepper, cayenne, melted butter, sugar, and bread crumbs well.

  2. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites until just combined.

  3. If the mixture is too stiff, add cream or milk; if too thin, add more crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop the mixture into well-buttered timbale molds, filling them two-thirds full.

  2. Set the molds in a pan of hot water and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes until puffed all over.

  4. Serve on a shallow dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they trap air and lift the mixture so it puffs as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soft crumbs add bulk and body, giving the timbale its tender, set structure.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the timbale tender and adding flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites until just combined. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the timbales bake flat and dense instead of light and puffed.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sugar, bread, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes