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Chicken Timbale

A baked dish of finely chopped chicken mixed with cream, bread crumbs, butter, mace, and seasonings, set in a mold and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Chicken Timbale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Chop the chicken meat finely.

  2. Pound the chopped chicken in a mortar.

  3. Rub the chicken through a sieve until you have 1 pint of prepared meat.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Mix the bread, cream, and mace together.

  2. Cook the mixture slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the mace from the mixture.

  4. Work the mixture into a smooth paste.

  5. Add the butter, salt, pepper, and chicken meat to the paste.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites until well blended.

  7. Set the mixture aside to cool.

Make the filling

  1. Boil 2½ cups of cream for the filling.

  2. Blend the flour with the reserved ½ cup of cream.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling cream.

  4. Boil for 1 minute.

  5. Add the chicken, mushrooms, truffles, and seasonings to the boiling cream.

  6. Cook for 3 more minutes.

Assemble the mold

  1. Butter the mold(s).

  2. Dot the bottom and sides of the mold(s) with truffle pieces.

  3. Line the mold(s) with the forcemeat, ensuring all parts are well covered.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and flavour of the forcemeat and filling.
Egg whites
Set during cooking to give the forcemeat structure and a light, firm texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the cream and help bind the forcemeat into a smooth paste.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the forcemeat.
Flour
Thickens the boiling cream so the filling becomes saucy rather than watery.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to both the forcemeat and the thickened filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until well blended. Egg whites trap air and set when heated, so overmixing deflates them and makes the forcemeat dense, while underblending leaves streaks of unset white.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, cream, bread, butter, mace, egg. 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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