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Filling (Cup cream teaspoon shortening)
1 cup cream 1 teaspoon shortening 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 3 cups diced chicken 1/2 cup sliced mushrooms Melt shortening, add flour and seasonings and mix smooth. Beat in cream and cook until thick. Add chicken and mushrooms. Grease molds, dot bottom sides with tiny dice of truffle and line them with forcemeat (take care to have lining thin at bottom of mold and thick around top or it will break when turned out). Fill molds to within three-fourths inch of top with creamed preparation and cover with forcemeat. Place molds in deep pan and pour in hot water to fill almost to top of molds. Cover with greased paper and cook in slow oven for 25 minutes. Water must not boil. Serve with Bechamel or Yellow Sauce. Serves 8 to 10.
This is the filling for chicken timbales — molds lined with forcemeat, filled with a thick creamed chicken, and cooked gently in a water bath. The forcemeat and the sauces are separate recipes elsewhere in the book.
- Keep the water below a simmerThe instruction "water must not boil" is the hinge of the whole dish. A boiling bath expands the filling and splits the forcemeat lining; hold the water at about 170-180F, adding cold water if it starts to shiver.
- Slow ovenRead that as about 300F. At 25 minutes the timbales should be just set and firm to a light press in the centre; you are setting the flour-thickened cream and the forcemeat.
- The roux is thin on fatOne teaspoon of shortening to two tablespoons of flour will not form a proper roux. Use about 2 tablespoons of butter to the 2 tablespoons of flour, or simply whisk the flour into a little of the cold cream and cook it out — the aim is a very stiff, spoon-standing sauce, not a pouring one.
- MoldsTimbale molds of 4 to 6 fl oz each, or ramekins or dariole molds of the same size. Grease well.
- Lining thicknessThe warning is worth heeding: press the forcemeat thin at the bottom of the mold and build it up thicker around the rim, as the recipe directs, and seal the lid of forcemeat firmly to the walls.
- TruffleFresh or preserved black truffle cut into small dice, set in the greased mold before lining, gives the dark pattern on the turned-out surface. Preserved truffle peelings do the same job for a fraction of the money; the dish works without it.
- MushroomsSliced raw mushrooms will shed liquid into a filling that needs to stay stiff. Sweat them in a little butter until dry before adding.
- The saucesBechamel here is the classic milk-based white sauce. The book's "Yellow Sauce" is a separate recipe elsewhere in the book; check its ingredients there.
- YieldEight to ten as stated, one timbale each, as a first course or a light main with rice or peas. The filling can be made a day ahead and chilled — it is easier to pipe or spoon into the lined molds cold.
Timbales — the name comes from the French timbale, a kettledrum and, by extension, a metal cup, which is generally taken to be the source of the mold's name — were a familiar centrepiece of American company dinners in the decades around 1900. They belong to the same tradition as the chicken croquette and the patty shell: a way to serve cooked poultry in a form that looked considered and could be assembled hours before guests arrived. Setting a pattern of truffle dice into a greased mold was a decorative device shared with professional kitchens of the period. That a home cookbook of this era expected the reader to have both truffle and a forcemeat recipe on hand suggests how far French professional technique had traveled into middle-class cooking.