Name: Timbale De Volaille
Ingredients: 1 cooked chicken, cut into small pieces; mushrooms, chopped; ham, chopped; truffles, chopped; white sauce; macaroni, cooked and 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

Directions

In a bowl, combine the chicken, mushrooms, ham, truffles, and white sauce.
Line a mold with the cooked macaroni pieces.
Fill the mold with the chicken mixture.
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).