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Timbale of Chicken

A baked dish of macaroni, chicken, ham, mushrooms, and spices in a molded pan.

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 the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into short pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, bring a large amount of salted water to a boil and cook the macaroni gently for just over 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, drain the water, and cut some macaroni into pieces about ⅓ inch long.

  4. Keep the lid on the saucepan to keep the remaining macaroni soft.

Assemble and steam

  1. Butter a pint-shaped mold or bowl and line it with standing pieces of macaroni, placing them close together.

  2. Chop the chicken, ham, and mushrooms, then mix with bread crumbs, salt, pepper, lemon rind, nutmeg, and the beaten egg with a little milk.

  3. Carefully spoon the mixture into the mold, pressing it down into the corners.

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

Serve

  1. 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 shell lining and firm outer structure once cooked and arranged in the mold.
Egg
Binds the chicken, ham and crumb mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the filling into a tender, sliceable mass.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the filling.

The step that matters

Pressing the filling into the mold. Packing the mixture firmly into the corners and under the macaroni lining removes air pockets, so the timbale holds its shape and turns out without crumbling.

“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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