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Corn Timbales

A baked corn mixture in molds, flavored with butter, onions, peppers, breadcrumbs, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Corn Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the onion and green pepper, and cook for five minutes without browning, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in the chopped corn, bread crumbs, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until thick and light, then add to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Cut and fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

  2. Fill well-buttered timbale molds two-thirds full.

  3. Set the molds in a pan of hot water and bake until the mixture is firm.

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

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

  2. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites and yolks give the timbale its airy lift and set it firm when baked.
Corn
Forms the bulk of the custard, providing sweetness and the main body of the timbale.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture and help hold the mixture together so it sets softly.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the onion and pepper base and helps keep the molds from sticking.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which gives the timbale its lift. Stirring hard would deflate the whites and leave a dense result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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