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Timbale, for Macaroni, Etc

A pastry shell made from flour, butter, egg yolks, salt, and water, filled with chopped beef suet and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Timbale, for Macaroni, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the paste

  1. Mix flour, butter, egg yolks, salt, and water until smooth to form a delicate paste.

  2. Butter a plain mold thoroughly and decorate the bottom and sides with some of the paste mixed with pounded sugar.

Assemble

  1. Cut a piece of paste to fit the bottom of the mold and cover it without disturbing the decorations.

  2. Moisten the ornamented paste, then lightly stick the remaining paste over it, sealing the edges.

  3. Fill the mold with chopped beef suet and cover it with more paste.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour, then empty the mold for use.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 structure of the paste, giving the crust its body once baked.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the paste and helps it brown in the oven.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste into a smooth, workable dough.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness to the filling, keeping it moist as it bakes.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the top paste is not moistened and sealed firmly to the bottom layer, it can separate or leak during baking. Moistening the surface helps the two pieces of dough bond together.

“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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