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Egg Timbales
Beat six eggs well and add half-teaspoon of salt and a pinch of pepper, one teaspoon of chopped parsley, a little onion juice, threequarters of a pint of milk, and mix well. Butter eight moulds and bake in oven in pan of hot water.
— Miss Louise W. Havens
A plain savory custard, baked in a water bath and turned out of its mould. The recipe gives no oven heat and no time, both of which matter more here than the ingredient list does.
- The hinge: gentle heatAn egg custard sets between about 170 and 180F; past that the proteins tighten and weep, and the timbale turns grainy and watery in the mould. Keep the oven at 325F, no higher, and rely on the water bath to buffer the heat.
- Oven and water bath"Bake in oven in pan of hot water" means a bain-marie: set the filled moulds in a deep pan and pour in hot (not boiling) water to come halfway up their sides. At 325F small moulds take roughly 25 to 35 minutes; they are done when the centers barely tremble and a knife slipped in comes out clean.
- Three-quarters of a pintAn American pint is 16 fl oz, so this is 12 fl oz, or 1 1/2 cups of milk to six eggs. That is an egg-rich ratio, well on the firm side for a custard meant to be turned out.
- The mouldsTimbale moulds were small straight-sided cups of about 4 fl oz. Eight 4-oz ramekins or custard cups hold this batch comfortably. Butter them well and, if you intend to turn them out, chill the buttered moulds first.
- Onion juicePeriod recipes meant juice pressed from a grated or halved onion — a teaspoon or so, for flavor without any texture. Grating half a small onion and squeezing it through a sieve gives the same thing; finely minced raw onion is not a substitute, as it will not soften in the short bake.
- Strain the mixtureNot in the original, but worth doing: passing the beaten eggs and milk through a fine sieve removes the chalazae and any unbeaten white, and gives a smooth set. Add the parsley after straining.
- Unmoulding and servingLet the moulds stand five minutes out of the water, run a thin knife around the edge, and invert. Eight small timbales serve four as a lunch or supper dish, traditionally with a cream sauce, tomato sauce, or buttered peas around them.
The timbale takes its name from the French timbale, a drum — the word was used for a pastry case shaped like one, and later for any small mould and the food set in it. By the 1890s the word had crossed into American cookery as a catch-all for anything bound with egg and custard and baked in individual cups: chicken, fish, spinach, or, as here, nothing but the eggs themselves. This is a community cookbook, assembled from the receipts of named local women. A custard baked in a pan of water was easier to manage in a wood or coal range whose oven temperature a cook could not read, since the surrounding water buffered the heat.