No. 2605

Timbale of Pheasants with Truffles

Timbale de Faisans aux Truffes

Remove the meat from the breast of two raw pheasants. Chop up the fleshy part of the legs with one fillet and the carcass parings, and with it mix an equal quantity of fat pork, a few raw truffles and fragments of foies-gras; pound well and pass through a sieve. Cut into large squares the remaining breast meats and lay them in a vessel with as much cut-up raw foies-gras; season highly and pour over a few spoonfuls of Madeira wine; keep this in a cool place for two hours. Butter a large dome-shaped mold, broader than it is high; line it with cold pie paste (No. 144) and cover with a layer of the forcemeat, filling the empty space with the contents of the vessel; cover the top with a thick, well-rounded layer of the same, and then lay several slices of fat pork on all; close up the aperture of the mold with a flat of the same paste, fastening it to the edges, and in the center bore a small opening. Now lay the timbale on a small-sized baking sheet and let it cook for about an hour and a half in a slack oven; after it has been removed for a quarter of an hour pour into the hole two or three gills of brown chaudfroid (No. 594), reduced with pheasant fumet (No. 397) and Madeira wine, and let it cool for twenty-four hours before unmolding. When ready to serve invert it on the table, lift off the mold and cut from the bottom a slice about an inch thick, then begin cutting the dome into even slices, not too thick, from the top to the bottom; restore these to their original shape on the piece cut from the bottom. Dress the timbale on a wooden foundation attached to a dish and covered with white paper; have small holes perforated at equal distances around the edges of this foundation and into these stick a dozen small hatelets, each one being garnished with two peeled truffles, one larger than the other. On the summit of the dome insert another hatelet garnished with large truffles; surround the foundation either with handsome jelly croutons (No. 2442), or else with slices of pie cooked in a cradle mold.

← No. 2604 Terrine of Wild Rabbits Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2606 Beef Tongue a la Rochefort →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a pâté en croûte — a raised game pie — dressed as a cold buffet centerpiece. Nothing about it is quick, and most of the work is in the timing of the cooling and the chaudfroid.

The hinge: the chaudfroid fills the gapAs the pie bakes, the forcemeat shrinks and leaves a void under the crust. The brown chaudfroid poured through the central hole about fifteen minutes after the pie leaves the oven fills that void and sets to a firm jelly as it chills. Pour it too hot and it renders the fat; too cool and it will not run. Warm and just fluid, poured slowly in stages, is right.
"Slack oven"A low oven, conventionally reckoned somewhere around 250-300F. The point is a long, gentle bake that sets the forcemeat without splitting the crust or boiling the fat out of it. Reckon on the stated hour and a half for a large mold, though by modern practice it is safer to check the center with a probe thermometer and cook to about 160F in the middle of the forcemeat rather than by the clock.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so two or three gills of chaudfroid is one to one and a half cups. That is roughly what a large dome mold will absorb; have a little extra warm and ready.
Fat porkFresh pork back fat, unsalted and unsmoked — not bacon, not salt pork. It goes into the forcemeat in equal weight with the game and again as barding slices under the pastry lid. Fatback is the closest current equivalent and most butchers will order it.
Foies-grasRaw duck or goose liver, sold as a whole lobe (grade A or B). Ranhofer's "fragments" are simply odd or broken pieces, of the sort left over from trimming a lobe; the good pieces are the ones cubed and marinated with the breast in Madeira.
Pie paste No. 144A strong paste for raised pies rather than a tender short crust; the recipe specifies it cold. It is structural -- it must hold a heavy filling for twenty-four hours and release cleanly from the mold. A short pastry will collapse.
PheasantFarmed pheasant is what is available now, and it is leaner and milder than the wild birds Ranhofer meant. If you use shot birds, go over the breast and legs carefully for lead shot before chopping. Two birds, with the leg meat and carcass parings included as the recipe directs, will not yield a great deal of meat -- buy generously.
Truffles and hateletsFresh raw truffles in this quantity are a serious expense; preserved black winter truffles work in the forcemeat, though summer truffles have little to give. The hatelets (also spelled attelets) are ornamental silver skewers, purely decorative — modern cooks generally skip them or substitute plain metal skewers.
Cooling and holding"Cool for twenty-four hours" meant a larder. Cool the pie at room temperature only until it stops steaming, then refrigerate for the full rest. Serve it cold, and keep the cut pie refrigerated; the crust and jelly do not protect it the way period cooks believed.
YieldA large dome mold of this construction is a substantial centerpiece, meant for a cold table rather than a few people. The slices are meant to be thin and returned to the dome shape on the base round, so the pie looks whole until it is served out.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put this in the garnishings-for-cold-dishes section of The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of his thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a category of cooking that has almost entirely vanished: the cold buffet as architecture. A timbale like this was not simply food but a pièce montée — mounted on a wooden plinth covered in white paper, ringed with jelly croutons, bristling with silver hatelets skewered with whole truffles, and carved so that the slices could be reassembled into the original dome. The technique underneath the display is the old French pâté en croûte, a game pie sealed in a strong crust with a chimney, the shrinkage gap filled after baking with a savory jelly; the raised pork pies of English tradition are a parallel rather than a descendant, and Ranhofer's version is built on pheasant, foie gras and Madeira because Delmonico's clientele expected the expensive register. The cross-references scattered through the text — to the pie paste, the brown chaudfroid, the pheasant fumet, the jelly croutons — are typical of the book, which assumes a brigade with those preparations already standing ready and treats a dish like this as an assembly job rather than a project.