No. 2728

Chicory Timbales

Timbales de Chicoree

Have some chicory prepared the same as for cream (No. 2729). strain it through a sieve; put one pound of this into a saucepan with four ounces of finely chopped cooked mushrooms, seasoning with salt, pepper and nutmeg; mix in singly four whole eggs, two yolks and lastly a gill of cream. Decorate some timbale molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), or a larger one, with fanciful cuts of truffles and tongue; fill these with the preparation and lay them in a sautoir on the fire; pour in boiling water to reach to half their height, boil and finish poaching in a slack oven; unmold and serve separately a Hungarian sauce (No. 479).

← No. 2727 Chestnuts with Gravy Cabbages & Greens No. 2729 Chicory with Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

A savory vegetable custard, poached in a water bath and turned out of its mold. The whole thing succeeds or fails on gentle heat: the water in the pan must never come back to a hard boil once the molds are in the oven, or the eggs curdle and the timbales weep.

What "chicory" means hereNot the roasted root sold as a coffee additive. Ranhofer's chicoree is the leaf chicory of French cooking — curly endive or escarole, and Belgian endive would also serve. The recipe sends you to No. 2729 for the preparation and asks only that it then be strained through a sieve; the usual handling of the leaf is to blanch it, squeeze it dry and stew it tender before puréeing.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces.
Slack ovenRoughly 250-300F. The recipe has you start the water boiling on the stovetop, then move the sautoir to the oven, where the low heat holds the bath just below a simmer.
Doneness, not timeNo timing is given. Small dariole molds take roughly 25-35 minutes at 300F; a single large mold, closer to an hour. The custard is set when the center reaches 175-180F and a knife comes out clean. Let them rest five minutes before unmolding or they slump.
MoldsTimbale molds are straight-sided or slightly flared metal cups; the book's own No. 2, Fig. 137 is not sized in this entry, and modern timbale or dariole molds commonly run around 4 ounces. Small ramekins or a muffin tin all work. Butter them well, then press the truffle and tongue cuts against the buttered surface so they stay put when the purée goes in.
The decorationTruffle and cooked beef or veal tongue, cut into small shapes with aspic cutters, laid in the bottom and up the sides so the pattern shows on the unmolded custard. Black olive and roasted red pepper give the same graphic effect at a fraction of the cost.
Hungarian sauceNo. 479 in this book is the Hungarian sauce the recipe calls for; sauces of that name in the period are generally velouté-based, with onion, paprika and white wine. Any smooth paprika cream sauce answers, and it should be thin enough to pool rather than coat.
Adding the eggs singlyFour whole eggs and two yolks beaten in one at a time, then the cream last, keeps the hot purée from scrambling and gives an even set. If the purée is warm, work off the heat.
YieldA pound of purée with four whole eggs and two yolks fills about eight 4-ounce molds — eight servings as a garnish or side, four as a light first course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style exactly: an ordinary boiled green is puréed, bound with eggs and cream, poached in a bain-marie and then dressed up with cut truffle and tongue so that the mold, once turned out, reads as a piece of ornament. Timbales — the French word means kettledrum and by extension a metal cup, and reaches French through Arabic al-tabl — were a standard way of presenting vegetables at the elaborate multi-course dinners of the period, where a plain dish of greens would have looked out of place beside the entrées. Leaf chicory appears here stewed or served with cream as in the adjacent recipe, No. 2729; the cross-reference is typical of Ranhofer, who built the book as a system in which one preparation feeds into the next. The Hungarian sauce alongside reflects the paprika-tinted sauces often associated with the cooking of Austria-Hungary.