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Entrées: Timbale
Timbale de Nouilles is a mould lined with paste, filled with German paste, minced chicken, grated cheese, etc.
Timbale à la Champenoise is filled with minced chicken, anchovies, gherkins, truffles, etc., with white sauce and wine.
Foie gras à l'aspic is a mould of aspic with pieces of foie gras in it.
Foie gras can also be dressed with truffles in little patties, as Petits pâtés à la Montglas; or larded with pieces of truffle, braised, and served with truffle sauce as Foie gras à la Périgueux.
DUCKS.
Filets de canetons aux petits pois are fillets of roast ducks dressed in a circle, with stewed peas in the centre. À la Macédoine, they are served with a vegetable Macédoine; à la Bigarade, with Bigarade sauce.
Filets de caneton farcis. A boned duck covered with forcemeat of fowl, cut in pieces the shape of fillets, and dressed in a crown with a vegetable garnish in the centre.
Caneton à la Diable is a roast duck cut up and devilled-served in a sharp sauce with mustard and cayenne.
Aiguillettes de canetons aux oranges are slices cut from the breast, dressed in a circle with a compote of oranges in the centre, and orange sauce.
Two kinds of entry are mixed on this page: things built inside a mould, and ducks arranged in a circle. Both are about shape, and in both cases the shape is the dish.
- A timbale is the mould firstThe word names the deep straight-sided mould, then the thing made in it. The pastry lining goes in before the filling, which means blind-baked pastry in a tin, and the whole construction is turned out to be sliced at table.
- German paste is noodle doughThe book defines it elsewhere as a paste of flour, eggs and butter, poached in strips, so Timbale de Nouilles filled with German paste is a pastry case of noodles, cheese and minced chicken. That is a baked pasta pie, and it is the one recipe on the page a modern cook could follow from the line as written.
- Aiguillettes are the long stripsCut lengthwise from the breast of a duck, which is now sold as a whole magret and sliced the same way. The orange version here uses a compote, meaning cooked and sweetened fruit, not raw segments.
- Bigarade means bitter orangeNot a sweet orange and not a sauce made from juice alone. Seville oranges have a short winter season, and their peel and sharpness are the entire point of the name; a dessert orange gives you a sweet sauce and loses the dish.
- Foie gras may be unbuyableIt is the one ingredient here whose availability depends on where you live, since its production and its sale are both restricted in a number of places. Where it cannot be had, nothing on this page substitutes for it; the dishes that use it are built around its texture.
- Devilled meant mustard and cayenneCaneton à la Diable is a roast duck cut up and served in a sharp mustard sauce, which is what this book means by devilling throughout. It is also, plainly, what you do with a duck that has already been served once.
Almost every dish on this page is arranged in a ring with something in the middle, and that is not decoration for its own sake. Food at a dinner of this kind was carried round and offered to each guest in turn rather than plated in the kitchen, so a dish had to look the same from every side, survive the journey from the sideboard, and still be intact for the last person served. A crown of fillets with peas in the well does all three, and a timbale turned out whole can be cut in the room. The moulds also carried a social message: a boned duck reassembled into fillet shapes, or a pie of noodles concealed inside pastry, advertised that someone in the house had the time and skill to do the work, which was the point of serving it.