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Timbales of Fowls with Truffles

A baked pastry timbale of stewed fowl, mushrooms and truffles, lined with veal forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Timbales of Fowls with Truffles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Lard the fowl pieces with thin fillets of bacon.

  2. Melt butter in a stewpan, add fowl, mushrooms, shallots, parsley, and white wine.

  3. Season with salt and spices, and stew gently until the meat is tender.

  4. Boil chopped truffles in white wine, mix with the fowl, and let cool.

Line and bake

  1. Butter three timbale moulds and line with overlapping strips of pastry.

  2. Line the moulds with small veal forcemeat balls, filling them nearly to the top with the fowl mixture.

  3. Cover with a flat of pastry, trim edges, moisten, and press together, making a small hole in the center of each.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours, making a wall of ashes around them to keep in position.

  5. When cooked, seal the holes with a piece of pastry.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls
Provide the tender meat that forms the body of the timbale filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the fowl gently cooks in the stewpan.
Pastry
Forms the moulded shell that holds the filling in shape during baking.
Chopped truffles
Contribute a concentrated, earthy aroma to the fowl mixture.
White wine
Adds acidity and moisture to the stew and to the truffle mixture.

The step that matters

Stewing the fowl until tender. Gentle stewing breaks down connective tissue in the meat. Cooking too hard toughens the proteins and dries the filling, which then bakes into a dense, dry timbale.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, shallot, white wine, truffle, veal):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, shallot, white wine, truffle, veal. 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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