Skip to main content
Main

A Timball of Maccaroni and Chicken

A baked pastry dish of macaroni, chicken, béchamel sauce, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Timball of Maccaroni and Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the macaroni in broth until tender.

  2. Mix in béchamel sauce and grated cheese with the chicken.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and coat it with bread crumbs or vermicelli.

  2. Fill the mold with the mixture, cover it with puff pastry, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Once baked, turn it out, cut the top off, and add a little béchamel sauce around the timball.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

Macaroni (in the method)
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the timball its body when cooked and set.
Béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess so the filling holds together without drying out.
Grated cheese
Melts into the filling, adding richness and savory flavor.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the filling.
Puff pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before filling the mold. A hot filling softens the puff pastry before baking, so the crust can turn soggy and fail to rise and brown evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipes