Skip to main content
Main

Timbale De Macaroni

A baked dish of boiled macaroni layered with ham, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, served with béchamel sauce or stewed mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Timbale De Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted boiling water for about 25 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni and cut into 1‑inch pieces.

  3. Mix the bread crumbs and ham well.

  4. Add stock, Worcestershire sauce, and mushroom ketchup. Mix well and add the beaten egg.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a plain mold with a cover.

  2. Line the mold with macaroni.

  3. Fill the mold with the mixture, pressing closely.

  4. Put on the lid and fasten it firmly.

  5. Stand the mold in a kettle of boiling water deep enough to cover it. Cover the kettle.

  6. Boil for 1 hour.

  7. When done, turn it out from the mold and serve with béchamel sauce or stewed mushrooms.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main savoury body and flavour of the timbale.
Macaroni
Lines the mold to form a firm, shaped outer structure once cooked.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the stock and soak up moisture, helping the mixture hold together.

The step that matters

Pressing the filling into the mold. Packing the mixture closely removes air pockets, so the timbale sets firmly and holds its shape when turned out instead of crumbling.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes