Skip to main content
Main

Fish Timbals

A baked salmon and almond mixture shaped in molds, served with Hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,769 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fish Timbals

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.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the salmon, chopped almonds, onion juice, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Gradually add the unbeaten egg whites, stirring gently.

  4. Carefully fold in the whipped cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill timbal molds with the mixture.

  2. Place the molds in a pan of boiling water and bake for 20 minutes.

  3. Turn out the timbals onto a platter and pour Hollandaise sauce around them.

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. Almond + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the timbales and supplies the flavour.
Egg whites
Set on heating to give the timbales their light, firm structure.
Whipped cream
Adds air and moisture, keeping the timbales tender rather than dense.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped cream. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped cream and egg whites. Stirring hard would deflate the mixture, making the timbales heavy and dense after baking.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, almond, onion, egg, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, almond, onion, egg, cream. 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

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipes