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Rice Axd Cheese Timbales

Rice and cheese timbales are steamed rice cakes flavored with butter, salt, paprika, parsley, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Axd Cheese Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Add the rice and cook for 1 hour without stirring until soft.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the butter, salt, paprika, parsley, and cheese until well mixed.

  2. Cook for an additional 10 minutes until the cheese is melted.

  3. Grease the timbale molds and place them in a pan of hot water.

  4. Fill the molds with the rice mixture and let them stand in the hot water until ready to serve.

  5. Invert onto plates and serve from the side with sweet-pickled peaches or pears.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Cooks the rice slowly into a soft, creamy base that holds the timbale together.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the timbale, setting into a soft, tender body as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the rice a smoother, more tender mouthfeel.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and, once melted, binds the rice into a cohesive mass.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice without stirring. Rice cooked long and undisturbed in hot milk absorbs liquid evenly and softens without breaking down. Stirring releases surface starch, making the texture gluey and uneven.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, butter, cheese):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, butter, cheese. 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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