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Chicken Timbales, Supreme
Chop very finely 1 cupful of white chicken-meat, 1/2 cupful mushrooms, 6 truffles. Mix all together with a tablespoonful of butter; add half a teaspoonful of salt, a dash each of cayenne, celery salt, and nutmeg or mace. Heat all together with half a cupful of rich cream, or cream sauce. When thoroughly hot, add a lightly beaten egg and stir until it thickens. Line buttered timbale moulds with rice boiled in milk and mixed with a little butter and beaten egg sufficient to moisten it; fill with the mixture, cover with the rice, and bake twenty minutes in an oven hot enough to brown the tops nicely. Turn out carefully on a hot platter, running a knife around the edge if they do not come out easily. Surround them with creamed peas, or serve in individual dishes with the peas. Or serve the peas dry around them and pass a mushroom sauce.
A classic French-style chicken forcemeat baked in a rice crust. The hinge is the egg: it is stirred into a hot mixture off the direct heat and must thicken without scrambling, or the filling turns grainy.
- Timbale mouldsThese are small straight-sided metal cups of about 4 to 6 fl oz. Ceramic ramekins or a deep muffin tin work; butter them heavily and, if you want a clean turn-out, line the bases with buttered rounds of parchment.
- Oven heat"Hot enough to brown the tops nicely" is a judgement by eye rather than a number; a fairly brisk oven, somewhere in the region of 375-400F, will do it. Twenty minutes suits small moulds; larger ones will need longer, and the centre should be checked for set rather than timed blind.
- The egg stepPull the pan from the burner before the egg goes in and stir constantly as it thickens over the barest heat. If it looks like it is about to curdle, take it off entirely; residual heat will finish it.
- TrufflesSix truffles here means small black winter truffles, sold whole or canned. A tablespoon of chopped preserved truffle, or a few drops of truffle oil stirred in at the end, gives the intent; plain sauteed cremini give a good dish without pretending to be the same one.
- The rice liningBoil short or medium-grain rice in milk until quite soft and sticky, then bind with butter and just enough beaten egg to hold. Long-grain rice will not cling to the mould walls. Press it up the sides in a layer under a quarter inch thick or the filling ends up a token amount.
- Celery salt and salt togetherHalf a teaspoon of salt plus celery salt plus any salt in a cream sauce adds up. Season the filling to taste before the egg goes in rather than measuring blind.
- Cream sauceIf using sauce rather than plain cream, a thick bechamel of about 2 tablespoons each butter and flour to a cup of milk holds the chopped meat together better and turns out more reliably.
- Yield and servingThe quantities should fill four to six small moulds, enough for four as a first course or a light main with the peas. Let them rest two or three minutes before unmoulding.
The timbale is generally said to take its name from the French word for a kettledrum, after the shape of the mould, and by the late nineteenth century the term covered a great many things baked in one of those little cups, from macaroni to lobster. "Supreme" here signals white breast meat and a cream sauce, the same sense preserved in supreme de volaille. Dishes like this one filled the entree course in American compilations of the period: made from cooked chicken, generously seasoned, and portioned into individual moulds.