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Fish Timbales
few grains cayenne 1 cup whipped cream 4 egg whites 1 tablespoon lemon juice Chop fish and press through a sieve; add onion juice, lemon juice, salt and pepper. When well mixed add whipped cream, almonds finely chopped, and egg whites beaten to a stiff froth.
Fill buttered timbale molds with this mixture, set in pan of hot water, and bake ten to fifteen minutes. Serve hot with Cucumber or Tomato Sauce, or cold, with mayonnaise dressing.
The ingredient list on this page is truncated — quantities for the fish, almonds, onion juice, salt and pepper are missing — so treat it as a method rather than a formula. A workable ratio for four egg whites and a cup of whipped cream is about a pound of cooked, flaked white fish and a quarter cup of blanched almonds.
- Cooked fish, not rawCooked or raw fish -- the recipe does not say. Timbales of this kind were commonly made with fish already poached or steamed and cooled, then chopped and forced through a sieve, though raw-fish mixtures were also used. Given the short bake, cooked fish is the safer reading.
- A food processor replaces the sievePulse the flaked fish to a fine paste rather than pressing it through a drum sieve. Stop before it turns gluey; the texture should stay slightly granular so the cream and whites can lighten it.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for a custard set in a water bath. Anything hotter will puff the whites and then collapse them.
- Timbale moldsSmall straight-sided metal cups, of the dariole type, in a range of sizes; buttered 4 oz ramekins do the same job.
- Ten to fifteen minutes is optimisticThat timing suits very small molds filled shallow. Half-cup molds usually need 20 to 30 minutes in the water bath. The centre should be just firm to a light touch and a knife inserted should come out clean.
- Whipped cream means unsweetenedWhip to soft peaks only. Cream beaten stiff will not fold into the fish paste without breaking.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine rasp and press the pulp through a strainer; a teaspoon is plenty for this quantity. It gives the flavour without the visible flecks that would spoil a pale timbale.
- AlmondsBlanched sweet almonds, chopped very fine — the recipe wants texture, not marzipan. Toasting them first is not traditional here and will muddy the colour.
- Yield and servingAbout six half-cup timbales, enough for six as an entrée course in the period sense or four as a light main. Unmold onto warm plates and pour the sauce around, not over.
The timbale -- the French word means a kettledrum and also a metal drinking cup, and the mold is similarly shaped -- was a fixture of the American entree course in the decades around the turn of the century, the point in a long menu where something light and elegant arrived between the fish and the roast. Its appeal was partly economic: leftover boiled halibut or haddock, sieved and bound with beaten whites and cream, reappeared as something that looked like it had cost a great deal more. That Lowney's, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, published a general cook book at all reflects the era's habit of using recipe collections as advertising; the books ranged well beyond the sponsor's product, and the fish and entree chapters read like any competent New England household manual of the day. Almonds in a savoury fish forcemeat are older still, a survival of the medieval and early modern taste for ground nuts as a thickener and enrichment.