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Timbales of Cold Meat

A steamed dish of finely chopped cold meat and mushrooms bound with breadcrumbs, eggs, and parsley, served with mashed potato garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Timbales of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the breadcrumbs in the stock.

  2. Mix the soaked breadcrumbs with the chopped meat, mushrooms, parsley, and beaten eggs.

  3. Turn the mixture into small well-greased dariole molds.

Cook and serve

  1. Steam for 20 minutes.

  2. Turn out onto a hot dish, garnish with mashed potato using a piping bag, and pour tomato sauce or thick brown gravy 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it firm when steamed.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up the stock and help give the timbales a light, tender body.
Cold meat
Forms the main body of the timbale and gives its savoury flavour.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Steam for 20 minutes. Steaming gently sets the egg so the timbales hold their shape without becoming rubbery or cracking. Too much heat or time can toughen the eggs and dry the mixture, so keep the water at a steady simmer rather than a hard boil.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mushroom, egg, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mushroom, egg, parsley, pepper. 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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