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Egg Timbales
1 tablespoon butter
3 eggs
1 tablespoon flour
Salt and pepper
⅔ cup scalded milk
Cayenne
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
Celery salt
Make a white sauce of the butter, flour, and milk, and add the egg-yolks, slightly beaten. Add all the seasonings, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg-whites. Fill greased baking-dishes twothirds full of the mixture. Set dishes in a pan of hot water and poach in a moderate oven (350° F.) until firm. Arrange on a platter and serve with tomato cream sauce.
PICNIC EGGS (DEVILED)
Mash the yolks of hard-cooked eggs, season with salt, pepper, butter, a little mustard and vinegar. Minced potted ham may be added, or the yolks may be mixed with mayonnaise dressing. Refill the whites with the mixture, press two halves together and wrap each egg in a square of oiled paper, the ends of which are twisted to keep the halves in place.
A savory custard set in a water bath — the technique is closer to a soufflé folded into a béchamel than to a baked omelet. The original already gives an oven temperature, which is unusual for the period and makes this an easy one to follow.
- The hinge: the water bathThe dishes must sit in hot water that comes at least halfway up their sides, and the water must not be allowed to boil. Boiling water drives the custard past setting into a curdled, weeping mess.
- Vessels"Baking-dishes" here most likely means individual timbale molds or custard cups. Three eggs and two-thirds cup milk, lightened with the beaten whites, will fill about four small cups two-thirds full; the recipe gives no yield.
- Scalded milkMilk was commonly scalded in period recipes, the usual explanations being to check souring organisms in an unpasteurized supply and to speed the sauce. With pasteurized milk you can heat it just to steaming and proceed.
- TimingNot given. At 350°F expect 20 to 30 minutes depending on cup size. They are done when the centers barely tremble and a knife inserted off-center comes out clean; carryover heat will finish them.
- Cool the sauce firstLet the white sauce drop below scalding before the yolks go in, or they will set into threads. Fold the whites in last with a light hand — the timbales rise slightly and then settle.
- Unmolding"Arrange on a platter" means turning them out. Let them rest five minutes out of the water, then run a thin knife round the edge and invert. Straight out of the oven they collapse.
- Tomato cream sauceNot given on this page. A simple version is a thin béchamel with strained tomato purée stirred in off the heat, seasoned with salt and a little sugar.
- The deviled eggsA separate recipe, not part of the timbales. "Potted ham" was a spiced, potted meat paste, made at home or bought in tins; canned deviled ham is the nearest thing. Oiled paper is paper treated with oil — parchment or waxed paper is the closest modern substitute.
Timbale, from the French for a kettledrum, named the drum-shaped mold before it named anything cooked in one, and by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks used the word loosely for any small custard or forcemeat baked in individual cups. Egg timbales belong to the era's genteel invalid-and-luncheon cookery: soft, mild, easy to eat, and elegant enough for a ladies' table without meat or expense. The Butterick books were published by the pattern company for the same readership as its magazines, so recipes were chosen for economy and presentability, which is exactly what three eggs stretched with milk into four molded portions delivers. The picnic eggs that follow show the other end of the same impulse — wrapping each stuffed egg in twisted oiled paper is a pre-plastic solution to transporting food, and the word "deviled" for anything sharpened with mustard and vinegar is first recorded in its seasoned-dish sense in the late eighteenth century, with the verb in general use from about 1800.