Skip to main content
Main

Pea Timbales

A baked dish of mashed peas mixed with eggs, butter, and spices, served with a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pea 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 the timbale mixture

  1. Rub two-thirds of the drained peas through a sieve to make a pea pulp.

  2. In a bowl, combine the pea pulp, beaten eggs, melted butter, salt, pepper, cayenne, and onion juice.

  3. Grease molds and fill them with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the molds in a pan of water and cover with buttered paper.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm.

  3. Serve with 1 cup of white sauce, adding the reserved peas to the 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Peas
Provide the main flavor and bulk of the timbale, with pulp giving body to the mixture.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the timbales their firm, sliceable structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the timbale mixture.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce so it coats the timbales smoothly.
Milk
Forms the base of the white sauce, adding creaminess and body.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Placing the molds in a pan of water moderates the oven heat so the egg custard sets gently. Baking without it risks overheating, which can make the eggs curdle and turn the texture grainy or rubbery.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, onion, sauce, flour, milk. 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

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes