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Timbale of Truffles
Peel and wash a pound or two of truffles, cut them up into slices about one-fourth of an inch in thickness, put them into a sautepan with a little warmed butter, season them with salt and grated nutmeg, and toss them over the fire until they are done taking care not to break them. Meanwhile rub one ounce of butter into one-fourth pound of flour, add a small quantity of sugar and form the whole into a rather stiff paste by adding the yolks of three or four eggs. Roll it out very thin on a floured board and cut it into various shapes. Butter a plain timbale-mould well, pack it in ice, decorate it with the shapes of paste and allow them to set. Prepare a puff paste with one pound of flour and twelve ounces of butter, roll it out thin also and line the mould with it. It should be seven turns puff paste. Fill the mould with the slices of cooked truffles, cover it with more of the puff paste, make a slight hole in the center, place the mould on a baking-sheet in the oven, and bake. When done, turn the timbale out of the mould, make a slight hole in the top, pour in some warmed half-glaze, cover over the whole with a slice of cooked truffle, and serve hot.
An extravagance even in its own day: a whole pound or two of truffles baked inside puff pastry. The technique is sound, but almost every element assumes a professional pastry station.
- The trufflesPeeling and washing implies fresh truffles, tossed in butter only until "done," with care not to break the slices; no timing is given. Preserved truffles in tins, the usual substitute today, are already cooked and need only warming.
- Quantity, honestlyFresh black truffle at current prices can run to many hundreds of dollars a pound, so a pound or two is a serious outlay. One way to get the shape of the dish without the cost is sliced cremini or a mixture of wild mushrooms with a little truffle and its juice for perfume.
- "Seven turns puff paste"Probably one more turn than the six of standard puff paste, for a fine, tight lamination. One pound flour to twelve ounces butter is a three-quarter butter ratio — a firm, workable paste rather than the richest possible.
- The decorating pasteThe butter, flour, sugar and yolks make a stiff decorating paste, cut into "various shapes." It is pressed against the chilled, buttered mould so the shapes stay put; the puff paste is then lined over them, and the decoration ends up on the outside of the turned-out timbale.
- Packing the mould in iceThis is the hinge. The butter on the mould must be hard so the paste cut-outs adhere and hold their positions. A freezer for fifteen minutes does the same work as the ice bath.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Puff paste of this thickness wants a hot oven, in the region of 425F, to lift, then a drop to around 375F to dry the interior; timing will depend entirely on the size of the mould.
- Half-glazeDemi-glace: brown sauce reduced with veal stock until it coats a spoon. The recipe has it poured in through a hole made in the top after the timbale is unmoulded, not through the vent cut before baking.
- YieldThe recipe gives neither mould size nor number served; a timbale on this scale would do for several as a first course, cut in wedges while the pastry is still hot.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and published this book in 1896, and the truffle timbale belongs squarely to the grand-hotel repertoire he inherited from French practice — a timbale being any preparation baked in a drum-shaped mould, from the Arabic tabl by way of the French word for a kettledrum. Truffles in this period were used lavishly, both as garnish and, at times, as a dish in their own right, served whole in napkins, in pastry, or under ashes. The elaborate business of setting cut-out paste shapes into a chilled buttered mould belongs to the same era of display cooking as socles and chaud-froid work: the dish is meant to arrive at the table looking carved, and the truffles inside are the reward for the architecture.