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Chicken Timbales

Chicken Timbales are small baked dishes made with chopped chicken, cream, egg whites, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Chicken Timbales

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Pass the chicken through a meat chopper several times.

  2. Beat in the egg whites, one at a time.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

Cook

  1. Turn the mixture into buttered molds surrounded with hot water.

  2. Cover and cook for twenty minutes.

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. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Cooked chicken
Provides the main body of the timbale, which firms as it cooks.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, giving the timbale its set, firm structure.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the set mixture tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Turn the mixture into molds surrounded with hot water. The hot water around the molds moderates the heat, so the egg proteins set gently. Too much heat makes egg-based mixtures curdle and turn rubbery.

“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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