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Chicken Timbales

A molded chicken dish made with ground chicken, milk, breadcrumbs, and egg whites, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the chicken breast until very fine.

Make the mixture

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk and stir in the bread crumbs until thick.

  2. Mix in the ground chicken.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the mixture into timbale molds.

Bake

  1. Place the molds in a baking dish filled with hot water and bake for 15 minutes.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

  4. Bread + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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
Beaten whites trap air and help the timbale set into a light, delicate structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and thicken it, giving the mixture body and holding moisture.
Rich sweet milk
Provides moisture and richness, and its proteins help set the custard-like texture.
Chicken breast
Forms the main protein base that sets into the body of the timbale when baked.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the air in the beaten whites. Stirring hard deflates the foam, which leads to a denser timbale with less lift when baked.

“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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