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Tomato Timbales
3 eggs. 1/2 teaspoon salt. 1/2 teaspoon pepper. 1 cup tomato puree. 1/2 cup sifted bread crumbs. 2 tablespoons melted butter.
Turn into buttered timbale molds. Set in baking dish on small folds of paper and surround with boiling hot water. Bake in moderate oven until the mixture is firm in center. The water must not boil. Take from the water. After a few moments turn out of molds. Serve with cream sauce.
A savory custard baked in small molds, set in a water bath. The recipe assumes you know to beat the eggs and stir everything together before filling the molds.
- The hinge: the water must not boilMrs. Wilson spells it out, and it contradicts her own "boiling hot water" a line earlier, so the later instruction governs. Hold the bath at 170-180F, barely steaming; a boil forces the egg proteins to tighten and the custards come out pitted and weeping. If the water begins to move, add a splash of cold.
- Moderate oven350F. With the bath as a buffer, a slightly cooler oven (325F) gives an even smoother set and costs only a few extra minutes.
- Timbale moldsSmall straight-sided metal or ceramic molds of about 4 oz. Ramekins, custard cups, or a muffin tin all work. Butter them well and, if you want a clean turn-out, line the bottoms with a round of parchment.
- The folds of paperA pad to keep the molds off the hot metal of the baking dish and stop the bottoms overcooking. A folded kitchen towel or a sheet of parchment does the same job.
- Tomato pureeIn 1920 this meant tomatoes cooked down and passed through a sieve, roughly the consistency of modern passata or canned crushed tomatoes. Do not use tomato paste from a tube; it is far more concentrated and will make the custard dense and sharp. If your puree is watery, reduce it a little first or the custards will not set.
- Sifted bread crumbsFine dry crumbs, sieved to remove the coarse bits. They absorb the tomato liquid and give the timbale enough body to unmold. Fresh soft crumbs will work but pack differently; measure loosely.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of pepper for three eggs is assertive by current taste. A quarter teaspoon is closer to modern palates, and white pepper keeps the color clean.
- Doneness and timingFigure 25-35 minutes for 4 oz molds. The centers should be just set and barely wobbling; a thin knife inserted off-center comes out clean, or a thermometer reads about 175F. The recipe says to wait "a few moments" before turning out; five minutes is a workable reading, and lets the edges pull away.
- Yield and sauceFour to six small timbales, enough for four as a light entree or first course. The cream sauce is a plain white sauce: butter and flour cooked together, milk or cream whisked in, seasoned with salt and a little nutmeg.
Timbales take their name from the French timbale, a drum-shaped cup, and at some point the word came to cover both the mold and anything baked in it. In American cookery of the 1900s and 1910s they were the standard way to give a vegetable the dignity of an entree: strain it, bind it with egg and crumbs, bake it gently in a water bath, unmold it, and blanket it in white sauce. Mary A. Wilson, who wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal and published this book in 1920, was working in the shadow of wartime food conservation, when meatless entrees carried real weight at the table rather than being an afterthought. The insistence that the bath never boil is the one piece of professional discipline she carries over intact.