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TIMBALES, SMALL (for Fruit, Jellies, or Creams)
Weigh three large fresh eggs, and then take their weight in flour and half their weight in powdered sugar. Break the eggs, and separate the yolks and the whites. Beat the yolks in a basin, and add to them first the sugar and afterwards the flour. When they are thoroughly mixed, and just before the timbales are to be baked, add the well-whisked whites of the eggs and a tea-spoonful of strained lemon-juice. Drop the paste in small lumps upon a buttered baking-tin, and hollow these in the centre like a cup. Bake them in a slow oven, and when they are done enough, trim them to a neat shape. Keep them in a dry, warm place until wanted; and when they are to be served fill them with fruit, jelly, or flavoured cream. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, without the contents, 2d. each. Sufficient for a small dish.
These are small sponge-biscuit cases baked flat on a tin, not moulded in timbale rings — the shape is made by hollowing the batter before it goes in the oven. The recipe is a weight-of-eggs formula, so it scales cleanly once you understand the ratio.
- The weighingThree large eggs in the shell come to roughly 6 oz (170 g), so you want about 6 oz flour and 3 oz sugar. Some Victorian recipes specify weighing the eggs whole in their shells, though this one does not say which is meant; if you weigh them shelled you will get a slightly richer, softer biscuit, which is no bad thing.
- Powdered sugarIn a British book of this date "powdered sugar" generally means sugar pounded or ground fine — close to what we call caster sugar. It is not modern icing/confectioners' sugar, which contains starch and will make the paste pasty.
- Slow ovenA slow oven is usually reckoned at about 300°F/150°C. The point is to dry the cases through without colouring them much beyond pale gold; at a higher heat the hollows are apt to puff shut and the edges scorch before the centres set.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe whisked whites and lemon juice go in at the last moment and carry all the lift. Fold them in with a spatula and get the tins into the oven immediately — the batter deflates within minutes and you will bake flat discs.
- Shaping the hollowDrop tablespoon-sized mounds well apart and press a hollow with the back of a wetted teaspoon. A piping bag with a plain half-inch nozzle, spiralled into a shallow nest, gives more even walls and less trimming afterwards.
- Half an hourThirty minutes at 300°F is right for cases of this size; they are done when firm, dry and lifting cleanly from the tin. Trim the ragged edges with a small serrated knife while still warm, since they shatter once cold.
- Keeping"A dry, warm place" means what an airtight tin means now. These are hygroscopic and go leathery in a humid kitchen; fill them no more than an hour before serving or the base softens.
- Yield and fillingExpect perhaps a dozen or so cases from three eggs, depending on how large you make them; the original says only "sufficient for a small dish" and does not state a number of servings. Whipped cream, thick fruit compote or a set jelly cut into dice all suit; anything loose and syrupy will dissolve the base.
Timbale comes from the French for a kettledrum, itself generally traced to the Arabic al-ṭabl, a drum — a reference to the straight-sided, slightly tapering mould in which the classic timbale is built. In nineteenth-century kitchens a timbale was more often a savoury affair: a case of pastry or forcemeat filled with salpicon, sweetbreads or macaroni. Cassell's places this sweet version among the small confections of the dessert course, where the name has drifted to mean simply an edible cup, borrowing the drum's shape without the mould. The batter is a plain biscuit or sponge-finger mixture of the weight-of-eggs kind used for ladyfingers and Savoy biscuits, though those usually carry more sugar than flour where this one reverses the proportions. The costing is worth noting: at twopence each, unfilled, the cases let a household set out something with the look of patisserie.