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Timbale of Mutton
Put some macaroni into a stewpan with a small lump of butter and milk and water to cover, boil for a few minutes, then strain off the liquid. Pour over the macaroni a small quantity of clear stock, and cook slowly until tender. Chop some cold mutton, also one or two slices of bacon, put them in a stewpan with the macaroni, add the grated peel of half a lemon, and season highly. Grate in one ounce of cheese and toss the whole over the fire until hot, then turn onto a plate and let it cool. Butter a mould, strew grated breadcrumbs in and line it with puff paste. When the mixture is quite cold, put it in the mould, cover it with paste, trimming off neatly round the edges, press them together, and bake the timbale in a rather slow oven. When cooked turn it out of the mould onto a dish, cut off the top and glaze the timbale. Arrange in the opening left by the removal of the top some freshly prepared and chopped salad; garnish round the dish with parsley, slices of cucumber and red radishes, and serve very cold.
Braised* Sheep's Tongues with Lettuce.
Steep the tongues in warm water with a little flour in it until the blood has soaked out of them, and blanch them, then put the tongues in a stewpan with a good braise, and then let them cook slowly. Wash and blanch as many cabbage lettuces as there are tongues, drain them as free as possible of water, open and cut out the stalks, dust them with salt and pepper, and tie them in their original form. Line a stewpan with slices of fat bacon, put them in the lettuces, moisten to their height with broth, and stew them until tender. When cooked, peel the tongues, drain the lettuces, and squeeze them in a cloth to extract the grease. Arrange the tongues and lettuces on a hot dish alternately, pour a Spanish sauce over them, and serve.
Two Waldorf uses for leftover roast mutton and the cheaper cuts that came with it. The timbale is a raised pastry pie baked in a mould and served cold; the tongues are a straightforward braise. Both assume a kitchen with stock and sauce already on hand.
- The hinge: fill the crust coldThe macaroni and mutton mixture must be completely cold before it goes into the pastry, as the original insists twice. Warm filling melts the butter in the puff paste, the layers collapse, and the sides slump when you unmould it.
- Oven temperature"A rather slow oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 300-325F. That is low for puff paste, but the point is to set the pastry through without the already-cooked filling drying out; timing will depend on the size of the mould, which the original does not specify.
- The mouldA charlotte mould, deep 6-inch cake tin, or straight-sided souffle dish all work. Butter it, dust with breadcrumbs rather than flour, and let the pastry overhang so you can seal the lid by pinching.
- Mutton and quantitiesAlmost no amounts are given: only one ounce of cheese, the peel of half a lemon and one or two slices of bacon. For a 1-quart mould, something on the order of 1 lb chopped cooked mutton (lamb shoulder is the usual substitute), 4 oz dry macaroni cooked as directed, and the bacon finely chopped would fill it -- enough for a cold luncheon for about six.
- "Season highly"Cold food tastes flat, which is why the original calls for high seasoning plus lemon peel and a full ounce of cheese. Salt and pepper the mixture to the point where it tastes slightly too strong while warm.
- To glazePeriod glazing means brushing the unmoulded pie with reduced meat stock or melted aspic and letting it set to a shine. Warmed apricot glaze is not the intent here; a clear savoury jelly is.
- "A good braise" for the tonguesThis is a braising liquid, not a verb: stock with mirepoix, a little wine, and pork fat or bacon rind. Sheep's tongues will want somewhere in the region of one and a half to two and a half hours at a bare simmer depending on size, and are far easier to peel while still hot.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce of brown roux, veal stock and tomato. A well-reduced brown gravy or demi-glace stands in for it.
- Soaking the tonguesThe flour-and-water steeping is an old method for drawing out blood so the tongues stay pale. A few hours in cold salted water, changed once, accomplishes the same thing and is easier to judge than "warm water" left standing.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, compiled a book in which a chapter of recipes includes cold mutton bound with macaroni and a dish built on sheep's tongues. A timbale takes its name from the French word for a drum-shaped cup or kettledrum, and in nineteenth-century usage meant anything cooked in such a mould: sometimes a delicate custard, sometimes, as here, a crusted pie turned out whole and cut open at table. Serving it very cold, filled at the last moment with dressed salad and ringed with radishes and cucumber, belongs to the era's fashion for elaborate cold buffet work, the same impulse that produced the aspic-glazed galantines and chaud-froids of the period. Mutton, the meat of a mature sheep, was ordinary eating then and has largely vanished from American markets since; lamb is the practical modern stand-in, though it is milder than what the book's cooks were seasoning against.