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Timbale, Veal and Ham
Make two pounds of good short pastry, such as would be suitable for meat pies, and with two-thirds of this line a well-buttered plain round mould. Cut three pounds of the fillet of veal into pieces an inch square, and make three-quarters of a pound of good veal forcemeat. Fill the pie with alternate layers of the veal, thin rashers of fat bacon, the forcemeat and dressed ham, and season each layer separately and rather highly. Roll out the remainder of the paste, and cover the timbale. Press it down, and trim neatly. Roll out the trimmings, and stamp out leaves or any fancy shapes, and with them ornament the surface. Brush it over with yolk of egg, and bake in a well-heated oven. About twenty minutes before the timbale is done, take it out, and pour in through the hole at the top a little nicely-seasoned dissolved aspic jelly made from the bones and trimmings of the veal stewed down with a cow-heel. The veal will be much improved if it is larded with the bacon instead of having the latter simply laid upon it. If it should be preferred, any kind of nicely-seasoned fricassee may be used instead of the veal and ham. Time to bake, from two to three hours. Probable cost, 7s. 6d. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
This is a raised veal-and-ham pie baked in a mould, with jellied stock poured in near the end. Two points decide whether it works: the pastry must be sturdy enough to hold three pounds of meat, and the jelly must go in while the pie is still hot.
- What a timbale is hereThe recipe specifies only a "well-buttered plain round mould": in effect a deep pastry-lined pie, closer to an English raised pie than to the small custard timbales also found in French cookery of the period. A deep cake tin or a springform of similar depth stands in well; butter it heavily and line the base with a disc of parchment.
- The pastry"Good short pastry, such as would be suitable for meat pies" means a strong meat-pie paste, not a delicate short crust: roughly 2:1 flour to fat, worked with lard or a lard-butter mix and enough water to make a firm dough. The recipe does not say whether the two pounds is flour or finished dough, so treat any flour/fat breakdown as approximate — around 1 lb 5 oz flour to 10-11 oz fat if the weight is taken as flour plus fat.
- Oven heat and time"A well-heated oven" is not quantified in the book; somewhere around 425F/220C is a reasonable reading. Start there for the first 20-25 minutes to set the crust, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder of the two to three hours. A pie this size and depth genuinely needs the long bake; the centre should read at least 160-165F.
- Veal forcemeatNot specified here; a period veal forcemeat would typically be breadcrumbs soaked in milk with suet or butter, egg, lemon zest, mace, chopped parsley, salt and pepper, often with minced veal. Season it and the meat layers assertively — the recipe says "rather highly," and the jellied stock suggests a pie likely to be eaten cool, which mutes salt and spice.
- The jelly, and the holeCut a vent in the lid before baking and keep it open with a small roll of foil or a metal funnel. The aspic goes in about twenty minutes before the end, while everything is hot and liquid enough to run into the gaps. Cold pie plus cold jelly will simply sit on top.
- Cow-heelAn ox or cow's foot was a common household source of gelatine, simmered with the veal bones for a stock that sets firmly on cooling. Ask a butcher for split calf's foot or pork trotters, or reduce a good veal stock and stiffen it with powdered gelatine — reckon on roughly 1/4 to 1/2 oz (7-14 g) per pint, depending on how firm a set you want.
- LardingThe suggestion to lard the veal rather than layer bacon over it is worth following: veal fillet is very lean and dries in a three-hour bake. Lacking a larding needle, cut the bacon into narrow strips and press them into slits made in the meat cubes.
- Serving and costSix or seven portions, as stated. Let it cool at least four hours, and preferably overnight in the refrigerator, so the jelly sets and the pie cuts cleanly. At 7s. 6d. this was a substantial outlay, of an order comparable to a domestic cook's weekly cash wage, though such wages varied a great deal.
Cassell's placed the veal-and-ham timbale among the ambitious "raised" dishes that a late-Victorian cook was expected to manage: the word timbale is generally traced to the French for a drum or kettledrum — and further back, it is often said, through Spanish atabal and Arabic al-tabl — with the culinary sense running through the metal cup as much as the instrument, and then attaching to anything baked in such a vessel. What is being described is really the English cold raised pie — veal, ham, bacon and forcemeat, sealed with jellied stock — dressed in French vocabulary, which was the prevailing fashion in printed cookery. The cow-heel is the tell of an older kitchen: before packaged gelatine was cheap and universal, every clear jelly and every set pie depended on long simmering of feet, knuckles and bones, and here the jelly is made from the veal's own bones and trimmings. The note that "any kind of nicely-seasoned fricassee may be used instead" reflects how such dictionaries worked — a single structural method, offered with substitutions, so one entry could serve a dozen dinners.