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Timbale Froide à la Toulouse
(Moulds of Cold Chicken Purée.) Ingredients.
One Anchovy. One gill and a half of Aspic. One Truffle. One Gherkin. Red Chilli. Aspic Cream. Half a pound of cooked Chicken or Veal.
Two ounces of cooked lean Ham.
Half a pint of Whipped Cream.
The page as printed gives only the ingredient list; the method belonged to the surrounding text of the original book. What follows is what a modern cook needs to know to read it sensibly, not a reconstruction of the missing steps.
- What a timbale is hereNot a pastry case and not the deep baked dish sold under that name today. In this period a timbale froide is simply a mixture set in a small straight-sided mould and turned out cold, in this case a chicken purée lightened with whipped cream.
- Half a pint of creamAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 285 ml, and the older reading is that this is the volume before whipping. Whipped, it roughly doubles, which is what makes the ratio of half a pound of meat to that much cream sound so generous.
- The meat must be sieved, not choppedThe whole character of these cold moulds depends on the purée being genuinely smooth: pounded in a mortar and then forced through a fine sieve or tammy. A food processor gets close, but the mixture still wants passing through a sieve or the cream will carry visible fibres.
- No setting agent is listedHalf a pound of meat and that much cream will hold a moulded shape poorly at best. Comparable period versions of cold moulded purees are often bound with a little aspic jelly or dissolved gelatine folded in before the cream, so the omission here may be a gap in the printed text rather than the whole technique.
- The ham is doing two jobsTwo ounces of cooked lean ham supplies both salt and the faint pink colour these moulds were valued for. Modern wet-cured ham is wetter, and its saltiness varies widely by brand, so season the puree after the ham goes in, not before.
- Keep it cold throughoutA cream-bound purée of cooked meat is a good medium for bacteria and it is never reheated. Chill the purée, the cream and the moulds, work quickly, and return the finished timbales to the refrigerator until they are served.
- YieldThe quantities would fill roughly six to eight small dariole moulds, or one mould of about a pint; the dish reads as a cold entree rather than a main course.
A la Toulouse is one of the fixed garnish names of nineteenth-century French cookery, generally attached to a white ragout of chicken, sweetbreads, mushrooms and truffle bound in a velouté sauce; in English high-class cookery books the name is also found attached to paler, simpler chicken preparations. This cold version belongs to the late Victorian and Edwardian fashion for moulded purées, the point at which mortar-and-sieve forcemeat work met a reliable supply of cream and ice. Such dishes suited a kitchen with staff: pounding and tammying half a pound of chicken into a purée fine enough to fold into whipped cream is slow work, and it is the sort of item a professional manual could assume its reader would deliver on a buffet in summer.