Name: Timbale De Volaille
Ingredients: 1 cooked chicken, cut into small pieces; 1 cup mushrooms, chopped; ½ cup ham, chopped; ½ cup truffles, chopped; 2 cups white sauce; 2 cups cooked macaroni, cut into even lengths

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 ↓

Timbale De Volaille

Ingredients

1 cooked chicken, cut into small pieces
1 cup mushrooms, chopped
½ cup ham, chopped
½ cup truffles, chopped
2 cups white sauce
2 cups cooked macaroni, cut into even lengths

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, stir together the chicken, mushrooms, ham, truffles, and white sauce.
Line a mold with the pieces of macaroni.
Fill the mold with the chicken mixture.

Steam and serve

Steam for one hour.
Carefully turn out the timbale and serve with white or brown 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.

Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,900 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together516 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 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

Cooked chicken: Provides the main protein and bulk of the filling.
White sauce: Binds the filling and adds moisture so it holds together when turned out.
Cooked macaroni: Lines the mold to form the shaped outer structure of the timbale.
Mushrooms: Adds moisture and savory, earthy flavor to the filling.
Truffles: Adds a strong, aromatic flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Carefully turn out the timbale. Steaming sets the filling so it can hold a shape, but the timbale must be given time to settle before unmolding. Turning it out too early or too roughly can break the macaroni lining and collapse the filling.

“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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Timbale De Volaille