Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Timbale

Chicken halves served on toast with mushroom sauce and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Timbale

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil flour with consommé until thick.

  2. Add mushrooms and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in cream and mix well.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Broil chickens, brush with melted butter, and keep warm in the oven.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut toast and place chicken halves on it around a platter.

  2. Pour mushrooms and sauce in the center.

  3. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

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. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

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

Flour
Thickens the consommé into a thick sauce as it boils.
Consommé
Provides the liquid base and savory flavor of the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a soft, tender texture to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the sauce.
Chickens
Form the main protein; broiling gives browned, savory skin.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the chicken brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Stir in cream and mix well. Adding cream to a thickened sauce can curdle or separate if it boils hard, so keep the heat gentle and stir until smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mushroom, cream, chicken, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes