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Timbales of Salmon

A baked dish of halibut and salmon in timbale molds topped with cream sauce.

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

Timbales of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the halibut mixture

  1. Pound the halibut to a paste and press through a wire sieve.

  2. In a saucepan, combine ½ cup of milk and the bread crumbs over medium heat, stirring to form a paste.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper, then mix in the halibut.

Make the sauce and fill the molds

  1. Line the bottoms and sides of timbale molds with paper and brush with melted butter.

  2. Fill the molds with the halibut mixture.

  3. In another saucepan, prepare a cream sauce with the remaining ½ cup of milk, butter, and flour.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, then carefully add the salmon.

  5. Almost fill the lined timbale molds with the cream sauce, then cover with the halibut mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the molds in a baking pan surrounded by boiling water, cover with buttered paper, and bake for about 20 minutes.

  2. Turn out from molds and serve with the cream sauce.

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Halibut
Forms the main body and firm, delicate structure of the timbales.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they bind the fish and help it hold its shape.
Milk
Provides moisture for the bread paste and the cream sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the cream sauce and lines the molds.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth cream sauce.
Canned salmon
Adds a stronger fish flavor and texture to the sauce layer.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Surrounding the molds with boiling water moderates the heat, so the fish mixture sets gently and evenly instead of drying out, toughening, or cracking at the edges.

“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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