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Egg Timbales

Egg Timbales are small baked egg cups made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, parsley, salt, cayenne pepper, optionally vegetables, served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg 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.

Make the custard

  1. Cover the bread crumbs with boiling milk and let them soften.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs, parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper to the mixture.

  3. Optionally, mix in a little cold meat or 1 cup of cooked green peas, cauliflower, or asparagus tips.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into tiny timbale pans.

  2. Set the pans in a larger pan filled with hot water and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Once done, invert onto a platter, remove the molds, and serve with a well-seasoned cream sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + peppertop 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

Eggs
Set when baked, giving the timbales their firm, sliceable structure.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and add body, keeping the custard tender rather than dense.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and makes a smooth, moist custard.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath. Setting the pans in hot water moderates the heat around the custard, so the eggs set gently. Without it, the edges can overcook and turn rubbery or curdled before the centre firms.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, 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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