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Swedish Timbales
Sift three-fourths of a cup of flour, half a teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of sugar. Gradually add half a cup of milk and one beaten egg, then one tablespoon of olive oil. Fry on a hot timbale iron in deep fat till crisp and brown.
Take from the iron, invert on brown paper to drain, then fill with any creamed mixture of meat, chicken or fish. Serve as an entree.- See Page XXV.
This is a batter for crisp fried shells, not a custard timbale — the "timbale iron" is the same tool sold today as a rosette iron. The whole thing hinges on the iron being as hot as the fat before it ever touches the batter.
- Heat the iron, not just the fatStand the iron in the fat until it is fully at temperature, then lift it out, tap off the drip, and dip. A cool iron gives a pale shell that slides off into the pan; a properly hot one sets the batter on contact.
- Fat temperature365–375°F is the working range. The original says only "deep fat"; period cooks commonly judged the fat by how quickly a cube of bread browned in it — a thermometer is faster and more reliable.
- Dip depthSubmerge the iron about three-quarters of its depth. If batter runs over the top face, the shell locks onto the iron and has to be prised off in pieces.
- Rest the batterLet the mixed batter stand 30 minutes before frying. It thickens slightly and clings better; a freshly whisked batter tends to slip.
- Olive oil in the batterA tablespoon of oil is there for tenderness and release, not flavour. Olive oil turns up in other recipes of the period, though how common it was in home pantries is not clear from this text; a neutral oil does the same job here.
- Draining"Brown paper" is grocer's kraft paper — a wire rack over paper towel works better, since shells left sitting on paper go soft underneath.
- YieldThree-quarters of a cup of flour makes roughly 18–24 shells, depending on iron size — six to eight servings as the entrée course this recipe intends.
- Fill at the last minuteCreamed chicken, fish or veal in a thick béchamel is the classic filling. The shells go limp within minutes of being filled, so hold them dry and assemble as they go to the table.
- StorageUnfilled shells keep several days in an airtight tin and crisp again in a 300°F oven for five minutes.
Timbale irons had a vogue in American kitchens around the turn of the twentieth century, when the fashionable entrée course called for something small, hot and architectural. The word timbale in French denotes a kettledrum and also a metal cup, and in cookery it came to describe a moulded custard or forcemeat in a drum-shaped dish; the fried batter shell appears to have borrowed the name because it produced the same cup shape by a much quicker route. The "Swedish" label attached to these irons and their batter in some English-language cookbooks of the period — the same tool and batter are recognisable in the Scandinavian rosett and struva traditions, though there the shells were commonly dusted with sugar and eaten as a sweet rather than filled with creamed chicken. This version is characteristic of the era's approach to cooked meat: bound in white sauce and served in a crisp container, it became a course worth naming.