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Egg Timbales

Egg Timbales are baked egg custard cakes served with cream or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Egg Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat well with a fork.

  2. Add the salt, pepper, parsley, and onion juice, then beat for another minute.

  3. Stir in the milk until well combined.

Fill and bake

  1. Butter medium-sized timbale moulds, one for each person.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the moulds.

  3. Place the moulds in a deep pan and add hot water until it almost reaches the top of the moulds.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) for about 20 minutes, or until firm in the center.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a warm dish and pour cream or tomato sauce around them.

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 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

Eggs
Set and firm up when baked, giving the timbales their structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and a tender, creamy texture to the set custard.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Eggs set through gentle, even heat. Surrounding the moulds with hot water keeps the edges from overcooking and turning rubbery or curdled before the centre firms.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, pepper, parsley, butter):

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

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