No. 3221

Massillon Timbales

Timbales a la Massillon

With some icing sugar, applied with a brush, coat over the inside of a charlotte mold, having it wider than its height; line it with marchpane paste (No. 139), not too thin, then dry this for a few hours in a mild temperature, and finally apricot over the insides. Take some almond biscuit (No. 3229), some vanilla Savoy biscuit (No. 3231) and some Genoese biscuit (No. 3239) flavored with lemon and rum; cut them up in uniform dice pieces and put them in a vessel, mingling in half a pound of candied pineapple cut in small bits, and adding a few spoonfuls of light apricot marmalade (No. 3675) in such a way that the whole becomes well mixed. Fill the empty lined mold with this and pour over a bavarois cream preparation (No. 3135), mixed with a little gelatine, and keep it on ice for half an hour. Just when ready to serve unmold on a cold dish and pour slowly over the biscuit a vanilla ice cream preparation (No. 3458), mixed with a few spoonfuls of whipped cream, then close the top with a layer of massepain (No. 3392) fastening it well to the edges. Unmold the timbale on a cold dish, cover the outside with fine apricot marmalade applied with a brush, and decorate the sides and top with fanciful pieces of candied fruits prepared beforehand for this purpose. Cover the bottom of the dish with a layer of the same ice cream preparation and serve at once.

← No. 3220 Conde Tart Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3222 Timbale of Waffles →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a construction job more than a cooking one: a marzipan-lined charlotte mold packed with diced cake and candied fruit, bound with Bavarian cream, sealed and glazed. Ranhofer assumes you have his other numbered preparations already made, so read the whole thing before starting and have every component cold.

The hinge: everything must be cold and firmThe Bavarian cream sets the diced cake into a sliceable block, and the ice cream layer goes in only once that has set. Rush either stage and the timbale slumps the moment it leaves the mold. Half an hour on ice is the minimum for the bavarois; a full hour in a modern freezer-cold setting is safer, and the finished timbale should go back to the freezer before the final unmolding.
Marchpane, massepain, marzipanAll three words descend from the same thing: a kneaded paste of ground almonds and sugar. Note that Ranhofer sends you to two different numbered preparations, No. 139 for the lining and No. 3392 for the lid, so they may not be identical formulas. Commercial marzipan works; almond paste is less sweet and stiffer, and needs sugar worked in before it will roll. Roll it thin enough to line the mold cleanly but not so thin it tears when you lift the finished dessert out.
"Apricot" as a verbTo apricot something is to brush it with strained, warmed apricot preserve. It seals the marzipan against moisture from the cream and gives the outside its gloss. Sieve the jam and warm it until it flows, then apply hot with a pastry brush.
The charlotte moldA plain, straight-sided or slightly flared metal mold, here specified wider than it is tall so the finished dome sits low and broad. The recipe gives no capacity; choose a mold that suits the number you are serving. The icing sugar brushed inside presumably helps the lining paste part from the metal.
The cake diceThree sponges are called for: almond, vanilla Savoy (a light ladyfinger-type batter) and Genoese flavored with lemon and rum. Any firm, close-grained sponge cut in half-inch dice will do the same work. Day-old cake dices far more cleanly than fresh.
A confusing instructionThe text says to unmold, then describes closing the top with marzipan and unmolding again. Read it as one operation: fill, chill, add the ice cream layer, seal the open face with a marzipan lid pressed to the edges, then invert onto the cold dish. The 1894 text simply repeats itself.
Candied pineappleHalf a pound is a substantial amount and the recipe says to cut it in small bits, so keep the dice fine enough that it distributes rather than clumps. If your candied pineapple is syrupy, blot it before mixing or it may bleed into the cream.
Serving and yieldServing -- Ranhofer gives no yield. It must go to the table immediately, as the text says: the ice cream layer and its pool on the dish are the point. A knife dipped in hot water cuts it most cleanly.

A Little History

Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and this recipe shows the book at its most characteristic: a dessert defined less by any single technique than by the ability to assemble half a dozen previously made components on demand, each cross-referenced to its own number elsewhere in the volume. The name is usually taken to refer to Jean-Baptiste Massillon, the French bishop and celebrated preacher associated with the court of Louis XIV, though Ranhofer gives no explanation for it. Timbale began as a word for a metal drinking cup or kettledrum and came to mean the drum-shaped mold and, by extension, anything cooked or set in one, savory or sweet; here the drum is lined in marzipan and filled cold, a form that belongs to the same family as the charlotte russe. The whole thing is a set piece for a large table and presumes a kitchen with several preparations already on hand.