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Timbales De Mouton

A steamed mutton custard served with fried bread or toast and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Timbales De Mouton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Finely chop the cooked mutton or pass it through a mincing machine.

  2. Mix the chopped meat with the tomato sauce.

Make the binder

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and mix well.

  2. Pour in the stock and boil until the mixture forms a ball and leaves the sides of the pan.

  3. Combine this mixture with the meat, then beat the egg and add it.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and mix thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill small, well-greased molds with the mixture and steam for 20 minutes.

  2. Turn out the timbales and serve each on a round of fried bread or toast, pouring brown sauce around.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together879 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Cooked mutton
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the timbales.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm when steamed.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a paste that holds the meat together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form the smooth base paste.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture, acidity and colour to the meat.

The step that matters

Boiling the flour and stock to a ball. The mixture must be cooked until it pulls away from the pan so the starch gelatinises and the paste thickens. If it is undercooked, it stays runny and the timbales may not hold their shape when turned out.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, egg, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, egg, pepper, nutmeg, butter, 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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