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Timbales De Volaille

A French-style chicken timbale with quenelle meat, ham, mushrooms, truffles, and white sauce, served with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom 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 ↓

Timbales De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moulds

  1. Butter nine small timbale moulds generously.

  2. Line the moulds with the quenelle meat, ensuring no gaps.

Fill and steam

  1. Mix the chicken, mushrooms, truffles, and ham into the white sauce.

  2. Fill the lined moulds with the chicken mixture.

  3. Cover the top with more quenelle meat.

  4. Steam the moulds for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully turn out onto a plate in a circle on spinach or mashed potatoes.

  2. Pour good white sauce over and around the timbales.

  3. Serve with peas or mixed vegetables in the center.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Quenelle meat
Forms the delicate outer shell that holds the filling and sets firm when steamed.
Cooked chicken breast
Provides the main body of the filling and a tender, meaty texture.
White sauce
Binds the filling together and keeps it moist during steaming.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the filling.
Ham
Adds salty, savory flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Lining the moulds with quenelle meat. Any gaps in the lining let the filling escape or leave holes in the set timbale. Pressing the meat evenly against the mould walls gives a sealed shell that holds its shape when turned out and steamed.

“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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