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Dessert

Timbales Au Pain

A baked bread custard made with milk, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, lemon peel, butter, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Timbales Au Pain

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs. Let them soak for 1 hour.

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately, then mix them together.

  3. Gradually mix the egg mixture with the soaked bread crumbs.

  4. Add sugar, lemon peel, and broken butter, then stir well.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter the timbale cases and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Once done, turn out and serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft body of the timbale.
Eggs
Set during baking to hold the timbale together and add richness.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and adds moisture to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten eggs into the crumbs. Beaten whites trap air that helps the timbales rise. Adding the egg mixture gradually and stirring gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate the batter and leave the timbales dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, egg, sugar, butter, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg, sugar, butter, brandy. 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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