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Ham Tihbals

A custard-like dish made with ham, flour, butter, milk, eggs, and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Ham Tihbals

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Chop the cold boiled ham twice using a meat chopper, then pound it to a paste.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, blend the flour and butter until dissolved.

  2. Add the boiled milk and cook until creamy.

  3. Season with lemon juice, salt, and pepper, then stir in the ham.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten yolks of the eggs until cool.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered timbal molds.

  2. Place the molds in a pan filled with hot water and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Turn out onto a platter and pour the rich cream 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Beaten yolks and whites set the custard and give it a light, airy structure.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk base into a smooth, stable sauce that holds the ham.
Butter
Enriches the base with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Boiled milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and body.
Cold boiled ham
Provides the savory flavor and meaty body of the custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air when beaten, and gentle folding keeps that air in the mixture. Overmixing deflates it, so the custard bakes up less light and airy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, flour, butter, milk, pepper, egg, 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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