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Timballs Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with meat, ham or bacon, onion, spices, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Timballs Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the macaroni until tender but not broken or sticking together.

  2. Cut the macaroni into pieces one-third of an inch long.

  3. Make a brown mince with the cooked meat, ham or bacon, onion, pepper, salt, cayenne, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and gravy.

Assemble and boil

  1. Butter a basin thickly and stick the macaroni closely into it to form a honeycomb shape.

  2. Fill the basin with the mince-meat and top with remaining macaroni.

  3. Boil for one hour, tightly covering with a pudding cloth.

  4. Remove from water five minutes before turning out of the basin.

Serve

  1. Serve with a small amount of gravy on the dish.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Macaroni
Forms the firm honeycomb shell that holds the mince together when turned out.
Cooked meat
Provides the bulk and savoury flavour of the filling.
Ham or bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the mince and keeps it moist.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the mince.
Gravy
Moistens the mince so the filling stays juicy during boiling.

The step that matters

Sticking the macaroni into the buttered basin. Macaroni must be tender but not broken or stuck together, and pressed closely, so the honeycomb holds its shape and the mince does not leak out when the basin is turned out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, pepper, ketchup, sauce, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, pepper, ketchup, sauce, butter. 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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