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Timbale of Macaroni
Put half a pound of the best tape macaroni in a stewpan with three pints of boiling water and a little pepper and salt. Let it simmer gently for twenty minutes, then drain it, put it back with half a pint of broth, and let it simmer until it will divide easily without being too soft. Cut it into short lengths of uniform size, and cover the inside of a thickly-buttered mould with it quite closely and neatly. Spread over the macaroni a little, good forcemeat seasoned suitably to whatever is to constitute the contents of the timbale, and afterwards fill up the mould with highly-seasoned mince of game or poultry. Moisten with good sauce, cover over the preparation, and let it simmer gently until done enough. If liked, three or four small timbales may be made instead of one large one, and their appearance may be varied by placing a truffle in the centre of the mould so that it will be at the top when the timbale is turned out. These small timbales have a pretty appearance. A suitable sauce should be sent to table with them. Minced game of all kinds, minced sweetbreads, and minced ox palates are suitable for the interior of timbales. Time to simmer, nearly an hour. Probable cost, varying with the contents. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A Victorian moulded pasta dish: ribbon macaroni lines a buttered mould, forcemeat lines the macaroni, and a seasoned mince fills the centre. The whole thing is cooked in a water bath and turned out.
- The hinge: line the mould tightlyEvery gap in the macaroni lining becomes a hole when the timbale is unmoulded, and the filling escapes. Butter the mould heavily, lay the cut lengths shoulder to shoulder in rings or spirals, and press the forcemeat over them firmly enough to glue the lattice together without shifting it.
- "Tape macaroni"Flat ribbon pasta rather than the tubes sold as macaroni today. Wide dried tagliatelle, mafalde or lasagnette cut to width does the same job; long tubes will work if you cannot get ribbons, but they line a mould less neatly.
- Do not cook the pasta throughTwenty minutes' simmering plus a further stint in broth plus nearly an hour in the mould is far past modern practice for dried pasta. Boil it only until pliable and still distinctly firm — it finishes cooking in the timbale, and overcooked ribbons tear as you line the mould.
- "Simmer until done enough"The recipe does not say how the mould is heated. The usual reading is a covered mould stood in a pan of barely simmering water reaching halfway up the sides; a moderate oven with a water bath does the same work. The book allows nearly an hour, which suits one large mould; smaller ones will be done sooner, so test them early.
- Half a pint of brothAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, a little over a US cup. Use well-flavoured stock; it is the pasta's only seasoning apart from the water it was boiled in.
- ForcemeatA bound, seasoned meat farce, typically minced veal, poultry or pork worked with breadcrumbs, egg and butter. A fine sausage meat or a food-processor mousseline of chicken and cream serves the same purpose: it must be spreadable and it must set firm on cooking.
- Ox palates and sweetbreadsThe suggested fillings belonged to a butchery that no longer exists in most shops. Ox palate requires long blanching and peeling and is effectively unobtainable; sweetbreads need ordering. Cooked minced game, duck or chicken with mushrooms is the practical substitute.
- The filling should already be cookedThe recipe assumes a mince made from cooked game or poultry, moistened with sauce. Build it as a finished ragout, well seasoned and not wet, so that the water-bath cooking sets the structure rather than cooking raw meat inside a sealed mould.
- Turning out and yieldRest the mould five to ten minutes before inverting, then serve with the sauce separately as directed. The original gives six or seven portions from half a pound of macaroni and its filling — generous by modern appetites for a first course.
A timbale takes its name from the French word for a drum or kettledrum, after the shape of the straight-sided mould, and in time the term came to cover both the vessel and anything cooked in it. Lining a mould with macaroni and filling it with a rich mince was one of the standard set pieces of the grand nineteenth-century kitchen, taught in the same breath as raised pies and aspic moulds; it is a demonstration of technique rather than an economical family dish. The fillings the book proposes point to a household using up the trimmings of larger dishes, and to a butcher's counter where offal was ordinary rather than exotic. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, first issued in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, was written for exactly the reader who might attempt this: a cook in a middle-class house with staff, ambition, and a shelf of copper moulds.