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Savoury Timbales

A baked pastry shell filled with bacon and beef suet, made from flour, egg yolks, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Savoury Timbales

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 paste

  1. Sift flour and salt onto a board, make a well in the center, and add egg yolks.

  2. Mix into a stiff paste, kneading well with your wrists.

Line and fill the moulds

  1. Butter small timbale moulds and line them with thinly rolled paste, ensuring no air bubbles.

  2. Fill the bottoms with bacon slices and beef suet, then cover with more paste, sealing the edges with water.

  3. Wet the top paste and place a cover of the same size on each mould.

Bake

  1. Brush lightly with egg, make a small hole in the center, place on a baking sheet, and bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the stiff paste that shapes and holds the timbale walls.
Egg yolks
Enrich the paste, adding richness, colour and structure as it sets in the oven.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and flavour that bastes the filling as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich during baking.

The step that matters

Kneading the stiff paste. Thorough kneading develops gluten in the flour, giving the paste the strength to be rolled thin and hold its shape without tearing or cracking in the oven.

“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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