No. 2385

Timbale of Lobster a la d'Aumale

Timbale de Homard a la d'Aumale

After a lobster has been cooked in a court-bouillon (No. 38). drain, and lay it aside to get cold; then pick out the meat and cut it up into escalops, not having them too thick--about a pound altogether; add to these slices two medium-sized blanched oysters after suppressing the hard parts; add also half a pound of mushrooms and four ounces of truffles. Butter with unmelted butter a half spherical, plain, round or oval mold; decorate it with fanciful cuts of truffles, and keep the decoration in place with a thick pike quenelle forcemeat (No. 90) mixed with lobster coral; fill up the inside with the above preparation, and finish with more forcemeat. Poach it in a slack oven for three-quarters to one hour; unmold, and serve separately a bechamel sauce (No. 409), with lobster butter (No. 580) added to it.

← No. 2384 Timbale of Fillets of Soles a la Gauloise Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2386 Timbale of Pullet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot and a larder of prepared bases already at hand; the whole dish is a set of cross-references. Read it as an assembly job: the forcemeat is the structure, everything else is filling.

The hinge: the forcemeat liningThe pike quenelle forcemeat is not a garnish but the wall of the timbale, and it must be stiff enough to hold the truffle decoration against the buttered mold while you load the filling. If it is loose the pattern slides and the timbale collapses when unmolded. A well-chilled mold and cold forcemeat make the difference.
"Poach it in a slack oven"Slack means a cool oven, roughly 250-300F, and poach here means the mold sits in a water bath rather than on a dry rack. Cover the surface with buttered paper. The recipe allows three-quarters of an hour to a full hour depending on the size of the mold; it is set when the center reaches roughly 160F.
Court-bouillon and coralNo. 38 is a court-bouillon, a salted aromatic broth, generally with wine or vinegar. Cook the lobster in it, cool in the liquid, and save the dark green coral from a hen lobster raw — it turns red on cooking and is what tints the forcemeat and the finishing butter. A male lobster will give you none, in which case the color is simply paler.
EscalopsSlices cut on a slant from the tail and claw meat, kept thin as the recipe directs. A pound of picked meat takes roughly two to three 1.5 lb lobsters.
The two oystersAs printed this reads oddly against a pound of lobster and half a pound of mushrooms; "blanched" here means dropped in their own liquor only until the edges ruffle, seconds rather than minutes. Treat them as a seasoning note, or leave them out — cooking them for the full oven time makes them tough regardless.
TrufflesFour ounces of fresh black truffle is a luxury purchase today rather than a pantry item. Preserved truffle peelings work for the decorative cuts; a mixture of dried and fresh mushrooms carries the earthiness if you skip them, though the black-on-pink pattern is the point of the presentation.
Béchamel with lobster butterBéchamel with lobster butter -- No. 580 is a lobster butter, butter worked with pounded lobster shells and coral and strained. Whisk it into the finished béchamel off the heat so it does not break, and keep the sauce loose enough to pool around the unmolded timbale.
YieldA one-quart mold serves six as an entrée course, or four generously. Let it rest five minutes before inverting onto a warm platter.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organized like a professional reference rather than a home cookbook — hence the numbered cross-references to court-bouillon, forcemeat and sauces stored elsewhere in the volume. Dishes labeled "à la d'Aumale" are generally traced to Henri d'Orléans, Duc d'Aumale, a son of Louis-Philippe whose name attached to a number of nineteenth-century garnishes; like most such dedications it signals a style — truffles, coral, a molded presentation — more reliably than any documented connection to the man. The timbale itself belonged to the era's grand service: a forcemeat-lined mold, poached in a bain-marie and turned out whole, was a set piece for the middle of a long menu, prized precisely because it demanded a kitchen with the labor to line, decorate and unmold it without a crack.