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Swedish Timbales
3/4 cup Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup milk 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 egg Mix the dry ingredients, add milk slowly, beaten egg; beat with Dover beater. Add the oil last. Beat all together to a smooth batter. If sells are to be used for sweet filling, add a teaspoon of sugar to the above rule.
Put the timbale iron in a kettle of hot fat, for about twenty minutes. Take the bowl of batter in the left hand and hold it near the kettle of hot fat; with the right hand lift the iron from the fat, wipe it on soft paper, dip it into the batter, coating the iron to within three-quarters of an inch from the top, allow the batter to dry and then dip it in the hot fat, holding the iron a little sidewise until it is in the fat, then turn perpendicularly and cook until the batter is a delicate brown, or about one minute. Take the iron out the same way it is put in, being very careful not to drop the timbale into the fat, drain the grease off and lay timbale on paper to drain. Wipe the drops of grease from the iron with a soft paper ever time it is used. These may be filled with creamed oysters, creamed fish, green peas, macaroni, oranges, bananas, apricots, strawberries, etc., or mixed fruit, with whipped cream over the top. They may be made at any time and put in a dry, warm place, where they will keep indefinitely.
This is a batter for fried pastry shells formed on a timbale (rosette) iron, still sold for the purpose. The batter is straightforward; everything depends on the iron.
- Typos in the original"If sells are to be used" is "shells," and "rule" is the period word for recipe. "Every time" is printed "ever time."
- Dover beaterA hand-crank rotary egg beater. A whisk or a hand mixer on low does the same job; the goal is a smooth, thin batter with no lumps, about the consistency of heavy cream.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives none. Hold the fat at 365-375F. Below that the shells absorb grease and slide off the iron; above it they darken before they set.
- The hinge: a properly hot, properly dry ironThe iron should be heated in the fat for about twenty minutes, as the recipe directs, then wiped dry before each dip. A cool iron lets the batter slide off, and a greasy one keeps it from clinging at all. Wipe it every single time, as the recipe insists.
- Coat only partway upDipping to within three-quarters of an inch of the top edge is what lets the finished shell release. If batter runs over the rim it locks the shell onto the iron and you will tear it getting it off.
- Releasing the shellAfter about a minute the shell should slip free on its own or with a light nudge from a fork tip. Drain rim-down on paper so the fat runs out rather than pooling in the cup.
- YieldThe recipe gives no count; expect roughly 18 to 24 shells from this quantity, depending on the size of the iron. Figure two or three per person as an entree course.
- "Keep indefinitely"Optimistic. In a truly airtight tin they hold a few days; they go limp with humidity. Re-crisp in a 300F oven for a few minutes. Fill only at the moment of serving, since any moist filling softens the shell within minutes.
Timbale irons and the shells made on them were a fixture of American cookery from roughly the 1890s through the 1920s, and turn up in promotional flour booklets of the era, of which the Gold Medal Flour Cook Book is one. The name is borrowed from the French timbale, a drum-shaped mold, though these fried cups have little to do with the baked custard timbales of classic French service; the same batter, dipped on a flower-shaped iron, is what Scandinavian-American cooks call a rosette, which is likely why the title calls them "Swedish." Fried batter shells on shaped irons are widely traced to Nordic and northern European holiday baking, and Swedish immigrant communities in Minnesota, where Gold Medal's Washburn-Crosby mill stood, kept the tradition visible. Their appeal to a milling company is easy to see: a showy, company-worthy dish built almost entirely from flour, and one that could be filled with creamed oysters for dinner or strawberries and whipped cream for dessert from a single batter.