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Timbale of Macaroni

A baked dish of macaroni, veal, and white sauce set in a molded pan and steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Timbale of Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Boil the macaroni until soft, then drain and cut into half-inch pieces.

  2. Butter a plain mold and line it with buttered paper.

  3. Place the macaroni in the mold endways to create a honeycomb appearance.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, boil water, butter, and salt.

  2. Add flour to the boiling mixture and stir for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in one egg and set aside.

  4. Pound the meat in a mortar and mix with half the paste, butter, salt, pepper, lemon peel, cayenne, and parsley.

  5. Add one egg and three yolks, then pass through a wire sieve.

Steam and serve

  1. Stir in white sauce and pour into the mold.

  2. Steam for half an hour and serve with truffle sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Naples macaroni
Forms the honeycomb structure of the timbale once packed into the mold.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water and butter into a binding paste.
Egg
Binds the meat mixture and sets it firm during steaming.
Veal cutlet
Provides the savory meat body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the paste and filling.
White sauce
Adds moisture so the filling stays soft and tender.

The step that matters

Pass the meat mixture through a wire sieve. Sieving breaks down pounded meat fibers and lumps, giving a smooth, even filling that sets uniformly rather than in grainy patches.

“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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