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Chicken Timbales

A steamed dish of chicken and cream filling in macaroni-lined timbales, served with truffle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chicken Timbales

12 timbale moulds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound the white meat of the chicken and pass it through a sieve.

  2. Add the cream and beaten egg whites, then season with pepper and salt.

  3. Whip the mixture together for 10 minutes.

Line and fill the moulds

  1. Line 12 timbale moulds with macaroni boiled in seasoned milk.

  2. Fill the moulds with the chicken mixture and steam for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully turn out onto a hot dish and serve with truffle sauce.

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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Meat + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White meat of chicken
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the timbale once cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the mixture soft and tender when steamed.
Egg whites
Set with gentle heat to bind the mixture into a firm, sliceable custard-like texture.
Macaroni
Forms the outer lining of each timbale, giving it shape and a tender pasta edge.

The step that matters

Steaming the timbales. Egg proteins set with gentle, steady heat. Steaming too hard or too long can make the mixture grainy, spongy or watery, so the moulds should be cooked gently and just until set.

“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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