No. 176

To Line and Bake Timbale Crusts

Pour Foncer et Cuire les Croutes a Timbales

Butter a plain timbale mold, five inches in diameter at the bottom, five and a quarter across the top and five and a half inches deep. If the timbale is to be decorated, apply some bits of sweetened noodle paste against the sides and bottom of the mold, dampen them with a brush dipped in water and then line the timbale with a paste not rolled out too thin. With a pastry cutter, two inches in diameter narrower than the mold, cut the paste from the bottom, but do not remove it; cover the whole surface of the paste with buttered white paper and fill in the empty space with common flour; dampen the edges, and cover the top first with a round piece of buttered paper, and then with a layer of the same paste, fastening it down to the dampened sides. Egg over the surface, and let it rest for fifteen minutes in a cool place, then set the timbale on a round baking sheet and cook it for fifty minutes in a hot oven. After removing it, unmold, open the top (the end which before was the bottom), and lift up the round piece previously cut with the pastry cutter, and which can easily be removed, then take out all the flour through this opening, also the paper, and brush the inside twice over with egg-yolks, then lay the timbale for a very few moments in a very hot oven so that it browns nicely, and range it on a dish to be garnished.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a construction method rather than a dish: a freestanding pastry case, baked hollow and filled at the table. The whole thing depends on the flour ballast holding the walls upright while the crust sets.

The hinge: flour, not beansThe mold is packed solid with dry flour inside a buttered-paper lining, which supports the walls along their whole height while the crust sets. Ranhofer says nothing about what becomes of the flour afterward.
"Hot oven"Ranhofer gives only "hot oven" for the fifty-minute bake and "very hot oven" for the brief browning at the end; roughly 400-425F and then 475-500F are reasonable modern readings, not figures he states.
The moldA plain charlotte mold or straight-sided tinned pan of roughly 5 inches across and 5.5 inches deep. Ranhofer's figures give only a slight taper: a quarter inch wider at the top than at the bottom.
The pasteRanhofer does not say which paste to use here, only that it should not be rolled out too thin. It has to be strong enough to stand alone once unmolded.
Sweetened noodle pasteA firm egg-and-flour dough, essentially fresh pasta dough with sugar, rolled thin and cut into shapes. Pressed against the buttered mold and dampened, the pieces adhere to the lining paste and appear in relief on the finished crust.
The cut bottomScoring a two-inch-narrower round in the base before baking creates the lid. The mold is inverted after unmolding, so what was the bottom becomes the top opening through which the flour is emptied.
Egg glaze insideTwo coats of yolk brushed on the inner walls, then a few moments in a very hot oven; Ranhofer's stated purpose is to brown the interior nicely.
Yield and useOne case of this size is a garnished entree centrepiece, ranged on a dish and filled: sweetbreads, quenelles, salpicon, macaroni.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen practice of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry belongs to its long opening run of elementary methods, the mechanical groundwork assumed before any dish is attempted. A timbale takes its name from the drum-shaped mold, from the same root as the kettledrum, and in nineteenth-century service the word covered both the mold and anything shaped in it. The large freestanding pastry case is a descendant of the medieval and Renaissance raised pie or coffin, often said to have been originally a thick container built to be filled rather than eaten, and by Ranhofer's day it survived chiefly as a display piece for the releve or entree course, brought out whole and opened at the table. The technique of packing a case with dry flour is older than commercial pie weights, and the ballast could be sifted and used again.