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Swedish Timbales

A fried batter made with flour, milk, eggs, butter, and sugar, shaped in a timbale iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Swedish Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the milk, then the beaten eggs and melted butter.

  3. Stir just enough to combine the ingredients.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture using a timbale iron.

  2. Fry in deep fat until crisp and 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main structure of the batter once it sets in hot fat.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm while frying.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the flour and eggs into a pourable batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a more tender interior.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Stir just enough to combine the ingredients. Overmixing a flour batter develops gluten, which makes the fried timbales tough and dense rather than light. Stop once the ingredients are evenly combined, leaving small lumps if needed.

“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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