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MACARONI (en Timbale)
Boil eight ounces of macaroni in the usual way, and drain it well. Have ready minced the white meat of a cold roast fowl, and a slice or two of lean ham; mix with two table-spoonfuls of grated Parmesan, and moisten with nearly half a pint of thick cream, and the beaten yolks and whites of three eggs. Cover a well-buttered mould with some of the macaroni, and mix the remainder, cut into neat lengths, with the meat, with which mixture fill the mould, and steam for three-quarters of an hour. A pudding paste is sometimes substituted for the lining of macaroni, but in either case steaming is better than boiling. Serve, turned out of the mould, and with a good gravy. Probable cost, 3d. or 4d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian way of turning yesterday's roast chicken into a moulded centrepiece. The custard binding is the part that decides whether it succeeds, so treat it as a savoury bread pudding rather than a pasta bake.
- Undercook the macaroniIt cooks again for 45 minutes in the steamer, so boil it several minutes short of al dente and rinse under cold water to stop it. Fully cooked pasta collapses into paste inside the mould.
- The macaroni intendedIn Victorian Britain this generally means long, straight, hollow tubes rather than modern elbows. Long tubes are what make lining the mould possible; if you use short shapes, simply mix them all through the filling and butter and crumb the mould instead.
- Half a pint of creamAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml), so "nearly half a pint" is roughly 270 ml. "Thick cream" here is closest to today's double or heavy cream.
- Lining the mouldButter the mould heavily, then coil the tubes against the sides from the base upward, packing them tight so the filling cannot leak between them. A charlotte mould or a 1.5-quart pudding basin both work.
- Steaming, not boilingCover the mould with buttered parchment and foil, tied down, and set it on a rack over simmering water with the lid on. Three-quarters of an hour is about right for a 1.5-quart mould; the custard is set when the centre reads 170-175F.
- Turning outLet it stand 10 minutes off the heat before inverting, or the still-liquid centre will slump. Run a thin knife around the rim first.
- The gravy"A good gravy" means a proper brown poultry or veal jus, not white sauce; the timbale is rich and mild and needs the contrast. Deglazed roasting juices thickened lightly are ideal.
- Quantities and yieldEight ounces of dry macaroni, the breast meat of one roast chicken and about 2 oz of ham give the four to five portions claimed. The "probable cost" line is a period price note, not an instruction.
A timbale takes its name from the French word for a kettledrum, borrowed for the round, straight-sided mould and then for anything cooked in it; Cassell's readers would have met it as one of the standard forms of the late-Victorian dinner table, where food that had been shaped, lined and turned out signalled a kitchen with time and a cook with training. Macaroni had by then been thoroughly domesticated in Britain, usually appearing baked with cheese or, as here, treated as a construction material. The recipe's real subject is leftovers: cold roast fowl and a slice of lean ham, bound with cream, eggs and Parmesan, and presented as though it had been intended all along. The note on "probable cost" is characteristic of the book, which was written for households keeping a close eye on the weekly bill, and the aside that a pudding paste may be substituted shows how fluid the boundary was between savoury puddings and the newer French-influenced moulded dishes.