No. 2989

Timbale of Noodles a la Pearsall

Timbale de Nouilles a la Pearsall

Make some noodle paste the same as for No. 142; roll it out a sixteenth of an inch thick and leave it dry slightly, then cut into very thin fillets and cook these in salted water for one minute; drain and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg, add six egg-yolks, a quarter of a pound of butter and a quarter of a pound of parmesan cheese. Garnish a timbale mold measuring five by five inches with foundation paste (No. 135), line the bottom and side with buttered paper, fill with rice, place a round of buttered paper on top, moisten the upper edge, cover over with a lid of paste and cook in a moderate oven for an hour. Unmold when cold, bread-crumb and egg over twice, mark it on the top half an inch from the edge and fry in white frying fat; remove the cover and empty out the timbale. Fry in butter one ounce of finely chopped onions with half a pound of minced mushrooms, add salt, pepper, nutmeg, meat glaze (No. 402) and tomato sauce (No. 549). Arrange the noodles in the timbale in layers separated with the mushrooms and grated parmesan. Pour over some gravy (No. 404) reduced with espagnole sauce (No. 414) and the timbale is ready to serve.

Sweet Entremets

SWEET ENTREMETS-HOT (Entremets de Douceur-Chauds).

← No. 2988 Timbale Milanese of Macaroni or Noodles Macaroni, Rice & Farinaceous No. 2990 Apples a la Giudici →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a grand-service showpiece: a fried pastry drum, hollowed out, filled with buttered noodles and mushrooms, and sauced at the table. The pastry case is architecture, not dinner, and most of the work is in getting it out of the mold intact.

The hinge: the case is a container, not a crustRanhofer's foundation paste (No. 135) is a stiff paste made to hold its shape through baking and frying rather than to be eaten, and the rice, buttered paper and pastry lid are all there so the shell bakes hollow and rigid. Do not treat it as a pie crust, and do not substitute a tender short pastry, which will slump and split when fried.
Oven temperatureThe book says only "a moderate oven"; that is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F. An hour at that heat sets and dries the paste case without coloring it much, since the browning happens later in the fat.
White frying fatClarified lard or beef fat, kept pale, so the case takes on an even gold rather than a scorched brown. Any neutral oil at 350-360F works; the case is already cooked, so this is a brief immersion for color and crispness.
Cutting the lid"Mark it on the top half an inch from the edge" means scoring a circle that will later be lifted off as a cover. In the recipe the scoring is done after the case is unmolded cold and breaded, before it goes into the fat; the cover is prised free and the rice tipped out after frying.
The noodlesRolled a sixteenth of an inch and cut into very thin ribbons, fresh egg paste needs about a minute in salted water. Anything longer and they will not hold their shape through layering and reheating.
The yolksSix yolks with a quarter pound each of butter and parmesan makes a rich binder, cooked only by the heat of the drained noodles, as in carbonara. If that matters in your household, use pasteurized yolks, and serve the timbale hot rather than letting it stand.
The sauces, without the cross-referencesMeat glaze (No. 402) is heavily reduced brown stock, gravy (No. 404) is roasting-pan juices, espagnole (No. 414) is the classic brown mother sauce. A good reduced brown veal or beef stock, glossy and slightly thickened, stands in for all three; the tomato sauce should be plain and smooth, not seasoned like a pasta sauce.
Mold and yieldA five-by-five-inch timbale mold holds roughly a quart and a half, close to a small straight-sided charlotte mold. The recipe gives no yield; as a course it would suit six or so.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the timbale case is one of its signatures: a paste shell baked blind over rice, fried, hollowed and filled at the last moment, so the kitchen could send out something that looked like a drum and ate like pasta. The word timbale is generally traced to the same root as the drum of that name, by way of Arabic through Spanish, and by the nineteenth century it covered both the vessel and anything molded in it. Dishes in this book carrying a family name -- "a la Pearsall" here -- may well point to a patron or an occasion, but Ranhofer does not explain them. Noodles bound with yolks, butter and parmesan place the filling in the Italian tradition that reached American hotel kitchens through French cooking, and it sits in the book immediately after a Milanese timbale of macaroni or noodles (No. 2988).