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Mushroom and Chicken Timhales

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 Timhales

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a separate bowl, mix 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.

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 so it sets into a tender custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy structure to the timbales.
Mushrooms
Provide earthy flavor and moisture that stays in the mixture as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the timbales a soft, sliceable body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps brown the mushrooms and chicken.

The step that matters

Fill molds with the mixture and bake. Egg-based mixtures set when heated gently; if baked too hot or too long, the eggs over-coagulate and turn rubbery or watery. Fill molds evenly so they cook at the same rate.

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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