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French Timbale
Line a round well-buttered mould with short paste, and put a thin layer of forcemeat to correspond, composed of calf's liver and bacon pounded, and highly seasoned with mace, nutmeg, lemon-peel, marjoram, thyme, and a couple of cloves of garlic (the bacon and liver should be semi-fried separately before being pounded), cayenne pepper, and salt. Lard a piece of the fillet of veal, about three pounds, and cut it in thick slices across the grain of the meat. Fill up the mould with alternate layers of the veal, small thin slices of boiled ham, and the forcemeat, not forgetting to season with herbs and spices as above. Roll out paste for a cover; see that it is even round the edge, and securely closed; pinch it round with pastry pincers. Make an ornament of leaves with some of the paste, brush with egg, and bake in a moderate oven. When done, and the heat has passed from it, pour in through the top a thin glaze made from the bones and trimmings of veal and some jelly of calf's foot. Time, two hours and a half to bake. Probable cost of veal, 1s. 4d. per pound. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A raised veal-and-liver pie in a mould, glazed with its own jellied stock — closer to a French pâté en croûte than to what a modern cook calls a timbale. The critical points are the pastry seal and the temperature the meat reaches inside it.
- The hinge: a vent and a set of jellyThe glaze is poured in through the top after baking, which means the lid needs a hole — cut a small central vent before it goes in the oven and keep it open with a roll of foil or a pastry funnel. The recipe says to wait until "the heat has passed from it": pour the stock in when the pie has cooled to lukewarm rather than hot, since too hot and it seeps out of the pastry, too cold and it will not run into the gaps left by shrinking meat.
- "Moderate oven"350°F (175°C). For two and a half hours in a deep mould, start at 400°F for the first 20 minutes to set the crust, then drop to 325–350°F and cover the top with foil if the ornament colours too fast.
- Check the centre, not the clockThree pounds of veal, plus the liver-and-bacon forcemeat and ham, packed in pastry is slow to heat through. Take it to 160F (71C) at the middle with a probe pushed through the vent hole; the stated time is a guide, and a wider mould will run shorter, a taller one longer.
- Short paste in a mouldA short (butter) paste is fragile for a deep raised pie. A hot-water crust or a stiff pâté pastry with a whole egg holds the shape far better, and a hinged springform or loose-bottomed pâté mould, well buttered and lined, is the modern equivalent of the round mould.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of pork back fat through the meat with a larding needle. Without one, wrap or interleave the veal slices with thin sheets of unsmoked fatback or fatty pancetta; veal fillet is very lean and will be dry otherwise.
- Calf's foot jellyRarely sold now. Simmer the veal bones and trimmings with a split pig's trotter for a naturally setting stock, or reduce good veal stock and set it with about 1 teaspoon of powdered gelatine per cup — it should be barely firm, not rubbery, when cold.
- SeasoningTwo cloves of garlic and a scattering of mace, nutmeg, cloves, lemon peel, marjoram and thyme is a period charcuterie mix and reads as strong on paper; in a cold pie it is about right. Season the forcemeat a shade past what tastes correct warm, since cold meat mutes salt.
- Serving and yieldSeven to eight, as stated, as a cold dish. Chill overnight so the jelly sets and the layers slice cleanly; serve in wedges with mustard or pickles. The "probable cost of veal, 1s. 4d. per pound" is a Victorian price note and of no present use.
A moulded, lined, layered, glazed pie of this kind was a set piece of the French repertoire taught to English cooks in the late nineteenth century, when timbale still meant anything built inside a drum-shaped mould (the word is generally traced to the same root as the kettledrum, via Arabic ţabl). The construction — a lining forcemeat of liver and bacon, alternating layers of larded veal and ham, a decorated lid, and jellied stock poured in through the top once baking is done — is the classic pâté en croûte of the charcutier, adapted for a domestic mould. Calf's foot, called for here as the setting agent, was one of the common household sources of gelatine before commercial leaf and powdered gelatine displaced it, and its near-disappearance from butchers' counters is one of the clearest markers of how much the meat trade has narrowed since this book was compiled.