No. 3222

Timbale of Waffles

Timbale de Gaufres

Pound ten ounces of shelled and skinned almonds with one pound of sugar and sufficient egg-white to form it into a fine soft paste. Put this into a vessel and incorporate half a pound of flour; dilute with eight lightly beaten egg-yolks. With a part of this paste lay on a waxed baking sheet a band four and a half inches wide by sixteen inches long, and bake it to a fine color; as soon as done pare the edges straight and bend it around a timbale mold; fasten the two ends well with cooked sugar, and leave till cold. Add to the remainder of the paste a few spoonfuls of whipped cream, and with it arrange on waxed baking sheets about forty very thin and even waffles, each five inches in diameter, and cook them to a fine color in a brisk oven; as soon as done roll them on a small roller about a quarter of an inch in diameter. When all the waffles are cooked and rolled up dip one end of them one by one into royal icing (No. 101), then into finely chopped pistachios, and lay them on a grate and dry the icing in a heater. After this is accomplished fasten them all around the waffle timbale, close to each other, having the pistachio ends uppermost, and attach them in position with cooked sugar; set this timbale on a waffle paste foundation dredged over with pink sugar (No. 172). Decorate the base with small one-inch diameter meringues filled with bavarois cream (No. 3133). When prepared to serve slip it on a dish and fill it with a light chocolate bavarois (No. 3131).

← No. 3221 Massillon Timbales Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3223 Waffles Brisselets with Raspberry Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a waffle recipe in the household sense but a piece of assembly work: a stiff almond tuile batter baked into a collar and forty thin wafers, glued into a crown with cooked sugar and filled at the table with chocolate bavarois. Everything hinges on speed while the baked pieces are still hot and pliable.

The hinge: shape while hotBoth the band and the wafers set brittle within seconds of leaving the oven. Bake one sheet at a time, and bend the band around the mold and roll the wafers on the dowel the moment they can be lifted; a piece that has cooled will shatter rather than curve. Slide a stiffened piece back into the oven for a few seconds to soften it again.
Pounding the almondsA food processor replaces the mortar. Pulse the almonds with the sugar rather than alone, so the sugar absorbs the oil and you get a dry powder instead of almond butter, then add the egg white a little at a time to reach a firm paste.
Quantities and yieldTen ounces of almonds, one pound of sugar, half a pound of flour and eight yolks makes roughly three pounds of batter — enough for the collar, the forty five-inch wafers, the base disc and some spare. Note that the egg white is unmeasured ('sufficient... to form a fine soft paste'). Bake more wafers than you need; breakage is expected.
"Brisk oven"Ranhofer gives no temperatures; a brisk oven is conventionally read as somewhere around 400-425F. Thin almond wafers colour at the rim before the centre sets, so watch for a fine even gold, only a few minutes, and pull the sheet as a whole rather than trying to save stragglers.
Waxed baking sheetThis most likely meant a sheet rubbed with wax. Use a silicone mat, which releases these batters cleanly and lets you lift the band in one piece.
Sizing the bandSixteen inches of band wraps a mold of about five inches in diameter. Measure the circumference of your own timbale or charlotte mold before you spread the batter, and cut the band an inch long so the ends overlap for the sugar join.
Cooked sugar as glueSugar boiled to hard crack, around 300F, sets in seconds and is the adhesive for the whole structure. It is also hot enough to cause a serious burn on contact; dip with tongs or a skewer, not fingertips, and keep a bowl of cold water beside the work.
Royal icingRanhofer's No. 101 is raw egg white beaten with confectioners' sugar. Since it is eaten uncooked, use pasteurized whites or meringue powder.
Assembly and humidityThe wafers go soft in a damp kitchen within an hour or two. Build the timbale as close to service as you can, keep the components in an airtight tin with a desiccant, and fill with the chocolate bavarois only at the last moment — the cream will soften the shell from the inside.
Pink sugarNo. 172 is granulated sugar tinted with a little colouring and dried; coarse sanding sugar tossed with a drop of gel colour and spread to dry gives the same effect.

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 belongs to the part of the book that is less cookery than architecture — cold entremets built as centrepieces to be carried in and broken down at the table. Gaufre is simply the French for waffle, but it covers any thin wafer baked between irons or on a sheet, a form generally traced to the medieval wafer-makers whose guilds supplied church and fair alike; by the nineteenth century the pastry kitchen had reduced it to a crisp almond tuile good for rolling into cylinders and cigarettes. A timbale, meanwhile, is a word that goes back to a drum or kettledrum — via Arabic tabl and Spanish atabal — and passed through the sense of a metal drinking cup before it came to name a mold and then anything built in that shape. What Ranhofer describes here is a small pièce montée: a collar of wafer, forty rolled wafers standing around it like a palisade with pistachio-tipped ends, meringues at the base, and chocolate bavarois poured in at the last minute. It is worth reading as evidence of what an American restaurant kitchen could command in labour — the piece exists to be looked at for a moment and eaten in five.