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Pimento Timbales

A baked dish of pimentos, bread crumbs, milk, chicken, parsley, eggs, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pimento Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Line timbale moulds with canned pimentos.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

Make the filling

  1. Add stale bread crumbs and milk, and cook for five minutes.

  2. Stir in chopped chicken, parsley, and beaten eggs.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake

  1. Cover with buttered paper and bake at 350°F (175°C) for twenty minutes.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the filling body and a soft, tender texture.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and keeps the filling tender as it cooks.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavour and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Cover with buttered paper before baking. Eggs set into a custard when heated, and cooking them too hard makes them curdle and turn watery. The cover traps moisture and gentle heat so the timbales stay smooth and tender rather than dry or grainy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, milk, chicken, egg, pepper. 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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