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Petites Timbales De Tomates a LA Siecle

A small tomato timbale made with aspic jelly, tomato slices, walnut puree, cream, and garnished with shredded endive.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Petites Timbales De Tomates a LA Siecle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a savory aspic jelly flavored with tomato.

  2. Line small timbale molds with the aspic and place a sprig of chervil in each.

Assemble and set

  1. Fill the molds with alternate layers of peeled tomato slices, walnut puree mixed with cream, and aspic.

  2. Allow each layer to set before adding the next.

  3. Keep on ice until set, then turn out and garnish with shredded endive.

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. Chervil + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Walnut + endivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Chervil + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chervil + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + endivetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich aspic jelly
Sets firmly to hold the timbale shape and carries the tomato flavor.
Ripe tomatoes
Supply the main fresh flavor and juicy texture between the layers.
Walnut puree
Adds richness and a nutty, creamy body to the layers.
Cream
Mellows the walnut puree and makes it smoother and softer in texture.

The step that matters

Allow each layer to set before adding the next. If a layer is still liquid, the next one mixes into it and the timbale loses its distinct stripes and may not hold its shape when turned out. Gelatin-based aspic sets as it cools, so each layer needs time to firm before the next is poured in.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chervil, walnut, cream, endive):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chervil, walnut, cream, endive. 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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