Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Timbale

A baked chicken dish made with chopped chicken, eggs, cream, and seasonings, served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Timbale

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Chop the meat from the chicken and pass it through a meat chopper several times.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat with 5 eggs, beating them in one at a time.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon salt, ⅛ teaspoon pepper, ¼ teaspoon celery salt, and ½ cup mushrooms if using.

  4. Stir in 2 cups heavy cream until well combined.

Prepare the mould and bake

  1. Grease a mould with butter and decorate with slices of hard-boiled egg or truffles.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mould and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Cook in a pan of hot water for 30 to 45 minutes until the center feels firm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, simmer the chicken bones in cold water, seasoned, for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the stock to 1 cup and mix with ½ cup cream thickened with 2 tablespoons flour and 2 tablespoons melted butter.

  3. Season the sauce to taste and pour around the timbale when serving.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Celery + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,006 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the chopped chicken and set into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Chicken meat
Forms the main body of the timbale, giving it a delicate, tender texture when chopped finely.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the mixture soft and tender as it sets.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the spoon.

The step that matters

Cooking the timbale in a water bath until firm. Gentle, even heat in a hot water bath lets the egg proteins set slowly, so the centre firms without curdling or becoming rubbery. Overcooking forces the eggs to tighten and weep liquid.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, egg, pepper, mushroom, cream, butter. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes