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Batter for Timbales
3/4 cup Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup milk 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 egg Mix the flour and salt, add milk gradually, the beaten egg, and lastly the olive oil. Beat batter five minutes.
This is not a baked custard batter but the thin coating batter for timbale-iron cases — the crisp fried shells, close cousins of Scandinavian rosettes, that were filled with creamed chicken, oysters or mushrooms and served as a first course.
- The hinge: a hot, dry ironThe timbale iron must be heated in the frying fat until it is as hot as the fat itself, then lifted, blotted for a second on paper, and dipped. A cool iron makes the batter slide off; a wet one makes it stick permanently.
- Dip depthImmerse the iron only about three-quarters of its depth, never over the top. Batter that laps onto the upper face of the iron locks the finished case in place and it will tear coming off.
- Fat temperatureThe book assumes deep fat judged by eye. Use 365–375F. Below that the shells drink oil; above it they colour before they set.
- Why five minutes of beatingThe book only says to beat the batter five minutes, without saying why; long beating smooths the batter and works air into it, and may also give the thin shell a little more strength. A modern cook will often let a beaten batter stand about 30 minutes before frying so that bubbles rise out.
- ConsistencyThe finished batter should be about the thickness of heavy cream and pour in a smooth ribbon. If it has thickened on standing, thin it with milk a teaspoon at a time.
- Olive oilThe olive oil sold in American kitchens of this period was generally an imported table oil and unlikely to have resembled a modern robust extra-virgin, which will make itself heard in so plain a batter; a light olive oil or a neutral oil gives a case that tastes of nothing but crispness.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the number of cases will depend entirely on the size of the iron. They keep a day in a tin and can be re-crisped briefly in a low oven; fill only at the last moment or they soften.
Timbale comes from the French timbale, used both of a kettledrum and of a metal drinking cup, and the cooking sense follows the shape of the mould used for moulded, baked forcemeats and rice cases; by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks had extended the word to these fried batter shells, made on a long-handled iron dipped into hot fat. They belonged to the era of the elaborate multi-course dinner, when a hostess needed a container for a spoonful of creamed something between the soup and the roast, and they turn up in cooking-school texts of the period alongside croustades, patty shells and bread cases doing the same job.