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Timbales of Chicken

A baked dish of minced chicken, mushrooms, and cream served with a creamy mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Timbales of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the timbales

  1. Mince the white meat of the chicken and add salt, cayenne pepper, onion juice, parsley, flour, egg white, and mushrooms.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of chicken stock and 1 cup of cream.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold or molds.

  4. Steam for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine 1 cup of cream, ¾ cup chicken stock, ½ cup mushrooms, 2 tablespoons flour, 2 tablespoons butter, and ½ cup milk.

  2. In the stock, add the milk, creamed flour, butter, and mushrooms.

  3. Cook for about 15 minutes, then add the cream.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Minced white meat forms the firm, sliceable body of the timbales as it cooks.
Egg white
Beaten stiff, it traps air and helps the timbales set with a light texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the timbales and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps bind the timbale mixture.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and flavor to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavor and moisture to the timbales and the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream to the sauce. Cream boiled for a long time can separate or turn grainy. Adding it after the flour-thickened sauce has cooked keeps it smooth and stops it from overheating.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, pepper, butter, egg, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, pepper, butter, egg, flour, cream. 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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