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Chicken Timbale

Chicken served on toast with mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Timbale

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil flour with consomme.

  2. Add mushrooms and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in cream.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Broil chickens and brush with melted butter.

  2. Place chickens on toast around a platter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour mushrooms and sauce in the center.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

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. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Thickens the consomme into a sauce as it boils.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft texture to the sauce.
Rich cream
Adds richness and body, making the sauce smoother.
Chickens
Form the main protein, browned by broiling for flavour.
Toast
Provides a crisp base that holds the chicken and absorbs juices.

The step that matters

Boil flour with consomme. Flour must be fully boiled into the liquid so its starch swells and thickens the sauce; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin texture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, mushroom, cream, chicken, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mushroom, cream, chicken, butter. 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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