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Mushroom and Chicken Timbales

A baked dish of sautéed mushrooms and chicken mixed with white sauce, breadcrumbs, and eggs, served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Mushroom and Chicken Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the mixture

  1. Sauté the mushrooms and chicken in butter with the onion until browned.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the White Sauce, bread crumbs, red pepper, salt, and egg yolks.

  3. Combine the sautéed mixture with the sauce mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill molds with the mixture and bake for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with Brown Sauce and additional mushrooms and truffle if desired.

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

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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 yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and help it rise in the molds.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the timbale a soft, tender body.
Butter
Browns the mushrooms and chicken, adding fat and savory flavor.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives lift. Deflating them by overmixing leaves the timbales dense instead of light and airy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, chicken, meat, butter, sauce, bread, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, chicken, meat, butter, sauce, bread, pepper. 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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