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Timbale of Chicken

A steamed timbale of chicken, ham, mushrooms, and macaroni bound with breadcrumbs, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Timbale of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the macaroni into short pieces.

  2. Boil a large pot of water with a little salt.

  3. Add the macaroni and cook gently for just over 5 minutes.

  4. Drain the macaroni and cut some into pieces about 1/3 inch long.

  5. Butter a pint-shaped mold or bowl.

Fill the mold

  1. Line the mold with standing pieces of macaroni, keeping them close together.

  2. Chop the chicken, ham, and mushrooms.

  3. Mix the chopped ingredients with bread crumbs, salt, pepper, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

  4. Beat the egg with a little milk and combine with the mixture until moist but not sloppy.

  5. Carefully spoon the mixture into the mold, pressing it down.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and steam in a covered saucepan with a little water for 1 hour.

  2. Turn out carefully and serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the shaped lining and a tender, starchy structure once cooked and steamed.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, which sets firm during steaming to hold the timbale together.
Egg
Binds the chopped filling so it holds its shape when turned out after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body, helping the filling stay tender rather than watery.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Combine the egg and milk until moist but not sloppy. Egg sets when heated and binds the filling, but too much liquid makes the mixture watery, so it may collapse or stay loose when turned out after steaming.

“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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