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Timbale Cases
1/2 cup milk 1 egg 1 tablespoon olive oil Sift the flour and salt; add the milk and beaten egg gradually, beating constantly with a wire beater; add the oil and continue beating until the batter is perfectly smooth.
Put the timbale iron in a kettle of hot fat for about twenty minutes. Take the bowl of batter in the left hand and hold it near the kettle of hot fat; with the right hand lift the iron from the fat; wipe it on soft paper; dip it into the batter, coating the iron to within three quarters of an inch from the top, allow the batter to dry and then dip it in the hot fat, holding the iron a little sidewise until it is in the fat; then turn perpendicularly and cook until the batter is a delicate brown. Take the iron out the same way it was put in, being very careful not to drop the timbale into the fat; drain the grease off and lay timbale on paper to drain. Wipe the drops of grease from the iron with a soft paper every time it is used. Fill the cases with creamed fish, oysters, chicken or sweetbreads.
A rosette-iron batter, printed here with its dry ingredients missing from the list. Everything depends on the iron being hot, dry and only partly dipped.
- The missing flour and saltThe ingredient list gives only milk, egg and oil, yet the method says to sift flour and salt. The quantities are genuinely absent from the original, and the book does not supply them.
- Batter consistencyAim for something close to thin crepe batter — it should coat the iron in a thin film and drip freely. Too thick and the case will be heavy and refuse to release; too thin and it slides off before it sets.
- Fat temperature"Hot fat" here means roughly 365–375F. Below that the cases absorb grease and stay pale; above it the thin batter darkens before it crisps. The book gives no temperature.
- Heating the ironTwenty minutes in the fat is simply the old way of bringing a heavy iron to frying temperature and driving off any moisture. The point is that the iron must be as hot as the fat and bone dry, or the batter will not cling.
- Why you wipe the iron each timeFat clinging to the iron makes the next coat of batter slide off in patches. The wipe on soft paper between every case is the hinge of the whole method — skip it and the shells tear.
- Three quarters of an inch from the topNever submerge the top of the iron. The uncoated rim is what lets the finished case slip free; batter over the top edge locks the shell onto the iron and it has to be pried off in pieces.
- Releasing the caseIf a case will not drop off after frying, ease it with the tip of a knife rather than shaking the iron over the fat. A dropped shell disintegrates and the crumbs will scorch and taint the whole kettle.
- Yield and holdingThe book gives no yield. Drain them on paper, and if made ahead, crisp them for a few minutes in a low oven before filling — they soften quickly in humid air.
- Filling themFill only at the moment of serving. Creamed fish, oysters, chicken or sweetbreads all release enough moisture to soften the shell within minutes.
Timbale comes from the French for a kettledrum, by way of the drum-shaped mold used for baked and molded dishes; by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks had extended the word to these fried batter shells, which are made not in a mold at all but on a long-handled iron dipped in batter and then in fat. The same tool and technique produce Scandinavian rosettes, and sets with interchangeable heads — plain cup-shaped forms and fluted rosette heads on a single handle — did exist, though how common they were is unclear. Cases like these belonged to the era of the small hot entrée — a spoonful of creamed oysters or chicken served in an edible container, one per guest, at a course where the kitchen wanted to look accomplished without spending much. Their appearance under Vegetables in a loose-leaf book is a reminder that these volumes were organized for the cook's convenience rather than by any strict logic: a timbale case is a vehicle, and it was filed wherever the compiler happened to need it.