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Pea Timbales
Drain and rinse one can peas, and rub through a sieve. To one cup pea pulp add two beaten eggs, two tablespoons melted butter, two-thirds teaspoon salt, one-eighth teaspoon pepper, few grains cayenne, and few drops onion juice. Turn into buttered moulds, set in pan of hot water, cover with buttered paper, and bake until firm. Serve with one cup white sauce to which is added one-third cup canned peas drained and rinsed. 6 green peppers 1 onion, finely chopped 2 tablespoons butter Stuffed Peppers I 4 tablespoons chopped mushrooms Buttered bread crumbs 1/3 cup Brown Sauce 3 tablespoons bread crumbs Salt and pepper 4 tablespoons lean raw ham, finely chopped Cut a slice from stem end of each pepper, remove seeds, and parboil peppers, fifteen minutes.
Cook onion in butter three minutes; add mushrooms and ham, and cook one minute, then add Brown Sauce and bread crumbs. Cool mixture, sprinkle peppers with salt, fill with cooked mixture, cover with buttered bread crumbs and bake ten minutes. Serve on toast with Brown Sauce.
A custard set in a water bath, so the hinge is gentle heat: the egg must coagulate without boiling or the timbales weep and go grainy.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, only "bake until firm"; a moderate oven of around 350F suits a water-bath custard. Small dariole or ramekin moulds set in a hot-water bath should be firm in roughly 25 to 30 minutes; test by touching the centre, which should feel set rather than liquid.
- The water bathPour boiling water into the pan to come halfway up the moulds and keep it below a simmer. Buttered paper over the tops, as directed, keeps steam off the custards and prevents a skin forming.
- Canned peasPeriod canned peas were softer and duller in colour than fresh, and often salty, which may be why the recipe directs draining and rinsing. Modern canned peas work the same way; frozen peas, cooked briefly and drained, give a brighter pulp and a better colour.
- Rubbing through a sieveA food mill or a blender followed by a sieve is faster. Push the skins out, since they will not break down and will speckle the custard.
- Onion juiceGrate a piece of onion on a fine grater and press out a few drops, or halve an onion and scrape the cut face with a spoon. It gives the flavour without the water and pulp.
- ProportionsOne cup pea pulp to two eggs is a rich, firm custard. Nothing here needs adjusting, but the two-thirds teaspoon salt assumes unrinsed liquid has been discarded; taste the pulp first if the peas were salty.
- Unmoulding and yieldLet the timbales stand a few minutes out of the water, then run a knife round and invert. The recipe gives no yield; one cup of pulp with the eggs and butter should fill roughly four to six small moulds.
- The sauceA plain white sauce of two tablespoons each butter and flour to one cup milk is the right consistency; add the whole peas at the end so they only warm through.
Timbales take their name from the French timbale, a drum-like metal cup or mould, and the word came to be used for savoury custards baked in one. Cookbooks of the period are full of them, and it is often said that they solved a problem for the American middle-class table: they turned cheap or leftover material into something that could be unmoulded, sauced and sent in as a separate course, in the manner of French service that hostesses of the period were trying to imitate. That this version starts from a can rather than fresh peas is telling. Commercially canned vegetables were widely available and respectable in Boston by the turn of the century.