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Macaroni and Sweetbreads, Timbale Of
Boil one pound of macaroni tender in two quarts of milk and a quarter of a pound of butter. Drain on a cloth. Line a mould with slices of fat bacon; mix a couple of beaten eggs with the macaroni, and season with pepper and salt. Put some in the mould, and a ragout of sweet-breads in the middle (see SWEETBREADS, RAGOUT OF); fill up with macaroni, and bake or boil the timbale for an hour. Turn out of the mould, take off the slices of bacon, and serve with white or brown sauce.
A moulded macaroni case with a sweetbread ragout hidden in the centre — straightforward once you accept that the pasta is cooked twice and must therefore be undercooked the first time.
- Undercook the macaroniThis is the hinge. The timbale then bakes or steams for an hour, so boil the macaroni only until it is barely pliable — 6 to 8 minutes for modern dried pasta — or it will collapse into paste when unmoulded. "Tender" in the original assumes the coarse, hard-dried macaroni of the period, which took far longer.
- The macaroni itselfCassell's most likely means long tubes rather than elbows. Lengths cut to fit the mould coil neatly against the sides; short shapes work but give a looser, more crumbly wall.
- Two quarts of milkEight cups of milk to a pound of pasta is a poaching bath, not a sauce, and most of it is discarded. Half that will do in a wide pan, with the quarter pound (115 g) of butter.
- Lining the mouldSlices of fat bacon most likely means fat pork or streaky bacon, laid overlapping to cover the buttered mould completely. It bastes the outside and releases the timbale; it is peeled off before serving, so cheap fatty rashers are the right choice.
- SweetbreadsCalf or lamb thymus; the term also covers the pancreas. Soak in several changes of cold water for a few hours, blanch briefly, then peel away membrane before making the ragout. They are highly perishable — use within a day of purchase, and cook the ragout through before it goes into the mould.
- Bake or boilBaking: around 350F (175C), the mould covered with foil and set in a roasting tin of hot water so the egg sets rather than curdles. Boiling means the mould is covered, sealed and stood in simmering water to the same depth. The recipe gives no mould size; after the hour, check that the centre reaches 165F (74C).
- Turning outRest the timbale 10 minutes off the heat before inverting. Straight from the oven the egg custard binding the macaroni has not firmed and the whole thing slumps.
- Sauce and yieldWhite sauce here is a béchamel; brown is a reduced espagnole or good meat gravy. A pound of macaroni with a ragout makes a substantial dish for eight.
A timbale takes its name from the French for a kettledrum, after the shape of the deep, straight-sided mould rather than anything about the filling — the word covers any dish built inside such a case, whether of pastry, rice, forcemeat or, as here, macaroni. The technique is the point: a starch-and-egg wall that sets firm enough to hold its shape, concealing a richer, more expensive centre. Sweetbreads were prized in Victorian and Edwardian kitchens for their delicacy and were correspondingly costly, so a mould that made a small quantity of ragout feed a table was good economy dressed as grandeur. The dish belongs to the long English borrowing from French service, where an offal ragout that would look meagre in a dish arrives instead as a turned-out, sauced centrepiece.