No. 3581

Chateaubriand Timbale

Timbale Chateaubriand

Pound finely half a pound of almonds and mix in four ounces of butter, the chopped peel of a lemon, six ounces of sifted flour, salt and three eggs; make a firm, but not too hard paste and leave it set for one hour; roll it out to three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness, and from this flat cut six pieces each six inches long by three and a half wide; lay them very straight on a baking sheet. Cut also two pieces a quarter of an inch thick, one having a diameter of seven and a quarter inches and the other nine inches; cook all these in a moderate oven and cool under weights. When very cold pare them on all sides to obtain panels six inches long and three and a quarter wide; bevel the edges on the inner long sides; cover them lightly with apricot marmalade (No. 3675) and glaze with royal icing (No. 102), white, red and chocolate. Decorate with royal icing, then fasten the panels together without attaching them to the baking sheet; decorate the joints of each panel with a small royal ice beading. Prepare the bottom piece six cornered, eight inches from end to end, and the top seven and a half inches; ice the bottom, one in white and the top one-pale green; on this one stand a dome made of meringue or royal icing, and on this dome a lyre, either of royal icing or gum paste (No. 3624); decorate around the bottom with a border of pink gum paste.

Chateaubriand Cream.—Pound four ounces of almonds with half an ounce of bitter ones and two gills of cream. Put ten egg-yolks in a basin with twelve ounces of sugar, half a vanilla bean, a pint of milk and the pounded almonds; cook the preparation on a show fire without boiling till it covers the spatula, then allow to cool; pour in a pint of fresh cream. Strain this composition through a sieve, freeze and add half as much whipped cream and four ounces of shredded pistachios as well as salpicon of candied fruits, seedless Malaga and Smyrna raisins, having all of these macerated for one hour in kirsch. Fill a six-sided mold of the same form and size as the Chateaubriand, only half an inch smaller in diameter; pack well in ice and freeze for two hours. Unmold the ice on the largest round, place on a dish with the timbale over, then set the small round on top; decorate with the cupola or lyre; serve.

← No. 3580 Algerian Timbales Ices & Ice Creams No. 3582 Stuffed Tomatoes →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a full pièce montée from Delmonico's: an almond-pastry casket built panel by panel, filled with a frozen almond custard. Read as a document of late nineteenth-century confectionery practice rather than as working instructions, because one ingredient in the cream puts it out of bounds.

The bitter almondsHalf an ounce of bitter almonds is the reason this cannot be made as written. Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding them with cream does. Unprocessed bitter almonds cannot legally be sold as a whole nut in the United States; in parts of Europe they remain available, though cyanide levels in almond products are regulated. A current recipe should be used if you want an almond ice.
Why the custard base compounds itThe almonds go into a cooked custard that is deliberately never boiled, then the mixture is frozen. Cooking below boiling cannot be relied on to drive off or break down the cyanogenic compounds, and freezing will not reduce them further.
Royal icingRoyal icing here is raw egg white beaten with sugar, used both as glaze and as structural cement for the panels and the dome. Modern confectioners use pasteurized whites or meringue powder for anything that will be eaten rather than merely admired.
Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so "two gills of cream" is one cup. Ranhofer's pints are US pints, 16 fl oz.
"A moderate oven"For the almond paste panels this means roughly 350°F. The panels are baked flat, cooled under weights so they stay dead level, and only then pared to size — the trimming after baking, not before, is what makes the joints meet.
The architectureThe six panels form a hexagonal shell that sits over, not around, a hexagonal ice moulded half an inch smaller. Nothing is attached to the baking sheet; the whole casket is lifted onto the large iced round at service. This is assembly work measured in hours, not a dessert course knocked together after dinner.
ScaleNo yield is given. The timbale stands about six inches tall on a base pared to roughly eight inches from end to end, and the frozen filling alone runs to well over two quarts.

A Little History

The name honors François-René de Chateaubriand, the writer and diplomat whose kitchen is traditionally said to have given its name to the thick cut of beef fillet, a naming usually credited to his chef Montmireil. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that kitchen, and its confectionery chapters belong to the tradition of Antonin Carême's architectural pièces montées — edible buildings assembled from baked panels, gum paste and royal icing, with the lyre on the cupola here doing the same decorative work a temple or a ruin would have done in Carême's day. Bitter almonds were an unremarkable flavoring ingredient in professional pastry of the period, used in small amounts for the intense marzipan note that sweet almonds alone do not give; their toxicity was understood but treated as a matter of dosage rather than prohibition, which is precisely the assumption modern food regulation no longer makes.