Beef Timbales
1 Pint Left-over Meat 1 Teaspoon Salt 1/8 Teaspoon Pepper Cup Stock or Water 2 Tablespoons Bread Crumbs 1 Tablespoon Butter 2 Eggs a Tomato Sauce over Free meat from fat and gristle; put through meat chopper, cutting fine; season with salt and pepper. Put the stock, bread crumbs and water together in saucepan in a saucepan over the simmering burner; when hot add the meat. Take from the fire and add the eggs, well beaten. Put mixture in greased custard cups; stand in baking pan half filled with hot water. Bake in moderate oven twenty minutes. Serve with the tomato sauce.
A thrift dish for using up Sunday's roast, set with egg and baked in a water bath. The technique is a savory custard, and it behaves like one.
- Timbale, not a drumA timbale is simply a small straight-sided mold; the recipe's own "greased custard cups" are exactly right. Ramekins of 5-6 oz work, filled about three-quarters full.
- A pint of meatA pint is roughly 2 cups, somewhere in the region of 10-12 oz of cooked beef; the recipe has you take the pint first, then trim off fat and gristle and put it through the chopper.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F, though period 'moderate' was reckoned anywhere from about 350 to 375F. Higher and the egg curdles at the edges before the center sets, leaving a weeping, grainy timbale.
- The liquid is ambiguousThe ingredient list gives a cup of "Stock or Water" but the method calls for stock and water together. Read it as one cup of liquid total, stock preferred; more than that and the custard will not hold.
- Simmering burnerOld gas ranges had a small low-output burner for holding things hot. Use the lowest setting on your smallest burner, and warm the liquid and crumbs only enough to soften them.
- Cool before the eggs go in"Take from the fire and add the eggs" is the hinge. If the meat mixture is still near boiling, the beaten eggs scramble on contact and will not bind.
- DonenessTwenty minutes suits shallow cups; deeper ones need 30-35. The centers should be just firm to a light press, around 160F, and the water bath should never come to a boil.
- YieldFour to six timbales, enough for four at lunch or supper. The tomato sauce is not optional in practice, since baked leftover beef is dry on its own.
Timbales belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian fashion for molded, bound-with-egg dishes, which let a cook present yesterday's meat as something with a shape and a sauce rather than as visible leftovers. A Sunday roast was often made to reappear through the week as hash, croquettes, or timbales. The custard cup and water bath here reflect ordinary kitchen equipment, and the tomato sauce, by then available in bottles as well as made fresh, was the standard remedy for a lean and rather plain forcemeat.