Home › Entrées › One Truffle (Gill of White Sauce) (II)
One Truffle (Gill of White Sauce) (II)
One gill of White Sauce.
Cut the chicken into very small pieces. Chop up the mushrooms, truffles, and ham, and stir into the white sauce. Butter well nine small timbale moulds; line them neatly with the quenelle meat, not leaving a particle uncoated; fill in with the minced chicken; coat them neatly over the top with the quenelle meat. Steam them for twenty minutes; dish in a circle on spinach or mashed potatoes; pour good white sauce over and round, and serve peas or mixed vegetables in the centre.
Timbales de Volaille (No. 2).
The mixture as for Soufflé de Volaille put into a mould well greased, and lined all through with pieces of cooked macaroni, cut in equal lengths, and fitted quite evenly (to do this, use a long trussing or larding needle); fill in with the Volaille, and steam one hour. The beauty of this dish depends entirely on the evenness with which the mould is lined with the pieces of macaroni. It must be turned out very carefully. Serve with white or brown sauce round.
This is the tail end of a longer entry — the chicken, mushrooms, ham, truffle and quenelle forcemeat are all assumed from the recipes above it — so treat it as a method rather than a complete formula. Two dishes are given: individual chicken timbales lined with forcemeat, and a larger one lined with macaroni.
- The hinge: the liningBoth versions live or die on an unbroken lining. The forcemeat must be pressed out evenly with no gaps, or the minced filling breaks through and the turned-out timbale collapses. The author says as much about the macaroni version, and it applies equally to the first.
- A gillA British gill is 5 fl oz, roughly two-thirds of a US cup. That is a small amount of sauce for a filling of chopped chicken, ham, mushroom and truffle — it should bind the mince, not loosen it.
- Timbale mouldsSmall deep moulds, drum-shaped or slightly tapered; the recipe gives no capacity. Ramekins or a muffin tin will stand in, though the tall silhouette is the point of the dish. Nine of them is the stated yield, so figure four to six as a first course.
- Quenelle meatA raw forcemeat of pounded chicken or veal bound with panada and egg, and enriched with cream — a food processor does in a minute what once took a mortar and a drum sieve. It must be raw going into the mould; it is what sets and holds the shape.
- Steaming and donenessTwenty minutes covers small moulds; the hour for the large macaroni-lined mould is not excessive given its bulk. Either way take the centre to 74C/165F, and cover the moulds with buttered paper or foil so condensation does not water down the filling.
- Turning outRest the moulds five minutes off the heat before unmoulding. Run a thin knife round, invert onto the spinach or potato base, and lift the mould straight up rather than shaking it.
- TrufflesPreserved truffle in tins was widely sold in this period and is the likeliest thing meant here; the recipe title may point to stretching a single truffle across a dish. Fresh black truffle is a different and far costlier proposition; a small jar of truffle peelings is closer to what was meant than truffle oil.
- Macaroni for the second versionNineteenth-century macaroni came as long hollow tubes, not short elbows. Use bucatini or ziti, cooked just short of tender so it stays pliable, cut to identical lengths, and threaded into place — a skewer works as well as the larding needle.
The timbale takes its name from the drum-shaped mould it is set in, the French word generally traced to Spanish and Italian forms of the Arabic al-tabl, a drum. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century a timbale de volaille seems to have been familiar entrée work in kitchens with pretensions: pounded chicken forcemeat, a lining laid in by hand, a steam bath, and a turned-out shape that had to be flawless because it arrived on the table naked but for its sauce. Manuals like this one were written for cooks in service in large households, where the entrée course was where skill was displayed, and the fussiness here — nine moulds each lined without a particle uncoated, macaroni fitted with a larding needle — is the labour of a kitchen with staff. The single truffle of the title may say something about economy at that level: an expensive imported ingredient, usually tinned, chopped fine so that a little of it perfumed the whole dish.