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Dessert

Timbales a LA Beaumarchais

A molded dish of mushrooms and foie gras in espagnole sauce, served with consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Timbales a LA Beaumarchais

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salpicon

  1. Cut mushrooms and foie gras into ⅜ inch squares to make a salpicon.

  2. Mix the salpicon with reduced espagnole sauce and game essence, then let it cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter the molds and decorate the bottom with a large truffle ring.

  2. Fill the molds with the mixture and poach.

  3. Invert onto a dish with a little consommé and serve the sauce separately.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Mushrooms
Add earthy bulk and texture to the salpicon filling.
Foies-gras
Adds richness and a silky, creamy texture to the filling.
Espagnole sauce
Binds the diced ingredients together and adds savoury depth.
Game essence
Adds concentrated meaty flavour that deepens the filling.
Butter
Greases the molds so the timbales release cleanly after poaching.
Truffle
Provides an aromatic decoration and a distinctive earthy fragrance.

The step that matters

Invert onto a dish. Unmoulding a delicate poached timbale requires the molds to be well buttered and the mixture cooled enough to hold its shape. Cooling lets the filling set, so it keeps its form when turned out onto the dish.

“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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