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Timbales of Salmon

A baked salmon and egg mixture shaped in timbale cases, served with white sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Timbales of Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Flake the canned salmon into bits, removing all bones and skin.

  2. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a paste and stir into the minced fish.

  3. Mince the whites of the hard-boiled eggs as fine as possible and stir into the salmon mixture.

  4. Season with salt, white pepper, lemon juice, and a dash of cayenne.

  5. Beat the mixture into the well-beaten yolks of the 3 eggs and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into buttered timbale cases and set in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Bake for about 25 minutes.

  3. Turn out onto a hot platter and pour white sauce with chopped parsley around the timbales.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned salmon
Forms the main body and flavor of the timbales.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks make the fish mixture richer and smoother, while the whites add texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a tender custard-like structure when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish flavor and balances richness.

The step that matters

Setting the timbales in boiling water. Baking the timbales in a water bath moderates the heat so the egg mixture sets gently. Direct high heat would make the eggs tough, grainy, or cracked.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, egg, lemon, sauce, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, lemon, sauce, parsley. 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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