Skip to main content
Main

To Make a Timbale of Potatoes

A baked potato dish formed in a mold, mixed with butter, eggs, and spices, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

To Make a Timbale of Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Cook, drain, and mash the potatoes, then pass them through a fine sieve.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the mashed potatoes with butter, whole eggs, egg yolks, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

Fill and bake

  1. Butter a 2-quart timbale mold and sprinkle it with bread crumbs.

  2. Fill the mold with the potato mixture, add more bread crumbs on top, and dot with butter.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Before serving, run a knife around the edge of the mold, carefully turn it over, and remove the mold.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the timbale once mashed and sieved smooth.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the potato mixture into a firm, sliceable custard-like structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness, making the set mixture softer and smoother.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky texture, and helps the top brown lightly.

The step that matters

Turning out the timbale. Run a knife around the edge before inverting so the set custard releases cleanly. Pressing or tilting too fast can tear the delicate baked surface and break the shape.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes