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Egg Timbales

Egg Timbales are baked egg custard cakes made with parsley, salt, onion juice, pepper, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add chopped parsley, salt, onion juice, and pepper; mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the milk until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered molds.

  2. Place the molds in a pan of boiling water, filling the water up to the edge of the molds.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the center is firm.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a firm custard structure as they cook, giving the timbale its body.
Milk
Adds moisture and dilutes the eggs, keeping the custard tender rather than rubbery.
Onion juice
Adds savory onion flavor to the otherwise mild custard.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Surrounding the molds with boiling water moderates the heat reaching the custard. Egg proteins set gently this way, so the timbale stays smooth and tender instead of curdling, cracking, or turning rubbery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley, pepper, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, pepper, milk. 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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