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Swedish Timbales
1 egg. 2/3 cup milk. 1 tablespoon olive oil, PROCESS: Mix and sift flour, salt and sugar, add milk slowly, stirring constantly, add well beaten egg and olive oil. Mixture should be very smooth, strain and let stand over night. Heat a timbale iron in hot Cottolene, drain and dip iron into batter, (having batter in a small pitcher), place in hot Cottolene and fry until crisp and delicately browned. Remove from iron and invert on brown paper. These dainty cases are for all kinds of creamed mixtures. They are used instead of patty shells or croustades.
A batter-fried pastry case made on a timbale iron, meant to be filled at the last minute. The printed ingredient list here is incomplete, which matters before you start.
- Missing quantitiesThe process calls for flour, salt and sugar, but the list gives only egg, milk and oil. Comparable timbale batters of the period run somewhere between about half a cup and a cup of flour, with a small pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar to this amount of liquid; the original text does not say, so treat any figure as a reconstruction rather than the author's.
- CottoleneA branded shortening based on cottonseed oil (compounded with beef fat), on the market from the later nineteenth century and most heavily advertised in the 1890s, and long gone from shelves. Any neutral frying fat with a high smoke point stands in for it.
- Fat temperatureThe old test was a bread cube browning in about a minute, which corresponds to roughly 370F. Below that the batter slides off greasy; much above it and the shell colors before it sets.
- Heat the iron first, and dry itThis is the hinge. The iron must be hot from the fat and wiped or drained, or the batter will not cling. Dip only to just below the rim so the case can release.
- Overnight restNot fussiness. The rest hydrates the flour and lets gluten relax, which gives a thin, even coat and a crisp shell. An hour will work if pressed, but the batter will be less smooth.
- Releasing the caseA finished shell usually loosens with a tap of the iron against the pan edge. If it grips, the iron was too cool at the dip or the batter was dipped too deep.
- Yield and timingThe recipe states no yield. This quantity of batter should give something on the order of a dozen small cases, each needing well under a minute in the fat. They keep crisp a few hours on paper and are best filled only at serving, since a creamed mixture softens them quickly.
- Sizing the mealFigure two or three cases per person as a first course. Modern equivalents are rosette or timbale irons, still sold, and a muffin-tin pastry shell will substitute if you have none.
Timbale irons are often associated with Swedish and Norwegian immigrant baking, where the same long-handled iron makes rosettes for holiday tables, though the form is a French and continental one as well; the batter here is essentially that thin egg-and-milk batter put to a savory purpose. The word timbale is French, from the name for a drum-shaped vessel, and by the 1890s it covered both molded custards and these fried cases. The recipe belongs to a moment when American cooking schools were teaching hostesses to serve creamed oysters, sweetbreads or chicken in individual containers rather than from a dish, and the book's own note that they replace patty shells or croustades explains the appeal: no pastry rolling, no oven, and a case made minutes before dinner. The call for Cottolene rather than lard is a period marker in itself, cottonseed shortening being heavily advertised in exactly these years as the modern, economical fat.