Name: Timbale De Legumes
Ingredients: young carrots; green peas; French beans; young broad beans; cauliflower; butter; pastry dough; yellow sauce

Why it works: Beans and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Timbale De Legumes

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.

Boil the vegetables until tender, then drain them.
Toss the vegetables in a yellow sauce.
Butter a mold and line it with pastry dough.
Fill the mold with the vegetable mixture and cover with more pastry dough.
Place a buttered paper on top to prevent burning.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 to 60 minutes, depending on size.
Turn out and serve immediately.

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.

Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,443 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Peas + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together949 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,994 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beans, cauliflower, butter, sauce):

Asparagusfits better
Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beans, cauliflower, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.