Ham Timbales
Make and bake same as Chicken Timbales II, using chopped cooked ham in place of chicken. Serve with Béchamel Sauce.
A one-line variation that depends entirely on its parent recipe, so the first job is to find Chicken Timbales II in the same chapter and work from that. What follows covers the points where ham behaves differently from chicken and where the original assumes knowledge a modern cook may not have.
- Read the base recipe firstEverything except the meat comes from Chicken Timbales II. Do not guess at proportions from this line alone; the quantities are only given in the parent recipe.
- What a timbale isA timbale here is a small deep mould; dariole moulds, custard cups or ramekins of roughly 5 to 6 oz capacity all work. Butter them well and, if the base recipe says so, line the bottoms with a round of buttered paper so they turn out cleanly.
- The water bath is the hingeSet the filled moulds in a pan and pour in hot water to come halfway up their sides. Without it the egg custard curdles at the edges and weeps. The water should stay just below a simmer, never bubbling.
- Oven temperatureIf the base recipe calls for a moderate oven, that is generally taken as about 325 to 350F for a custard mixture of this kind. Higher and the timbales puff, then collapse and go grainy.
- DonenessTwenty to thirty minutes for small moulds, depending on size. They are done when the centre is set and a thin knife inserted at the middle comes out clean; an instant-read thermometer will show about 170F. Let them stand five minutes before unmoulding so they firm up.
- SaltCured ham carries far more salt than the cooked chicken the base recipe assumes. Cut or omit any added salt in the mixture, and season the Bechamel lightly for the same reason.
- Chopping the hamChop it finely, or put it through the fine plate of a grinder or pulse it in a food processor. Larger pieces are more likely to settle in the custard and make unmoulding awkward.
- Yield and servingMixtures of this type generally fill several small moulds, and timbales were served as a light entree course with the Bechamel; check the parent recipe for the yield it gives.
Timbale is generally traced to the French for a kettledrum, by way of the drum-shaped mould the mixture is baked in, though that derivation is conventionally repeated rather than documented; the French word itself descends from Arabic al-tabl by way of Spanish atabal. The form arrived in American cooking through the French-influenced hotel and cooking-school kitchens of the later nineteenth century. Fannie Farmer's entree chapter is full of these small bound custards chicken, fish, sweetbread, ham and it is often said that they solved two problems at once for the middle-class household the Boston Cooking School was training: they turned leftover cooked meat into something that could be sent to table with a sauce and a name, and they fit the multi-course dinner service then expected, where a small hot dish came between fish and roast. The reliance on a cross-reference is characteristic of the book too; Farmer built her chapters as systems, with one worked-out method and a string of variations hanging off it.