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Timbales of Whiting

A steamed dish of whiting mixed with butter, flour, milk, eggs, salt, pepper, and lemon juice, served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Timbales of Whiting

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the fish from the bones and pass it through a wire sieve.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter and mix it with the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the milk and cook until well combined.

  3. Stir in the whiting, eggs, salt, pepper, and lemon juice; mix thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into well-greased dariole molds and cover with greased paper.

  2. Steam for 20 minutes, then turn out and serve with white 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Whiting
Provides the main body and delicate flavour of the timbales.
Eggs
Set when steamed, giving the timbales their firm, custard-like structure.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour through the roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth base that holds the fish together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the fish and sets with the eggs.

The step that matters

Mix the base until smooth before adding the fish. Cooking the butter and flour briefly and then whisking in the milk prevents lumps. A smooth base sets evenly with the eggs, so the timbales steam to a uniform, tender texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, butter, milk, lemon, egg, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, butter, milk, lemon, egg, flour. 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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