No. 961

Timbales a la Benton

Line some buttered timbale molds (No. 2, Fig 137) with some timbale paste (No. 150), having it rolled out as thinly as possible; fill up the interior with buttered paper stuffed with flour, cover the top with a layer of the paste and pinch the edges with a pastry tong; egg over the surface twice, and cook it in a moderate oven; when done uncover, empty out, unmold, and brush the timbales with eggs and set them in the oven to color nicely. Fill them with a salpicon of truffles, tongue, mushrooms and chicken mingled with a buttered allemande sauce (No. 407).

← No. 960 Timbales a la Beaumarchais Hot Side Dishes No. 962 Timbales a la Calaisienne →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a cross-reference recipe in the fullest Delmonico's manner: three of its four components live elsewhere in the book. What is described here is essentially a blind-baked pastry case in miniature, filled at the last moment.

The hinge: the flour-stuffed paperThe buttered paper packed with flour is a blind-baking weight, and it must fill the mold completely and firmly or the thin paste will slump inward as it sets. Dried beans or ceramic weights in a paper or foil liner do the same job; flour has the advantage of flowing into every corner of a fluted mold.
Moderate ovenRead this as 350°F. Small timbale cases of thin paste will be set and pale in roughly 20-25 minutes; the second egg wash and return to the oven for color takes only a few minutes more.
Timbale pasteRanhofer's No. 150 is a stiff, short, unleavened pastry made for standing up as a container rather than for eating — flour, butter, egg and a little water, worked firm. Any sturdy pâte brisée rolled very thin will serve; puff paste will not, as it lifts and distorts the mold.
Timbale moldsThe reference is to a plate of molds in the book: small, straight-or-tapered-sided cups, roughly 2 to 3 inches across. Dariole molds, popover tins or small ramekins are the modern equivalents. Butter them thoroughly and chill the lined molds before baking.
Pastry tongA pincer for crimping a decorative edge where the lid meets the wall. A fluted pastry wheel, or the tines of a fork, closes the seam adequately.
SalpiconSimply a mixture of ingredients cut to uniform small dice — here about ¼ inch. The tongue is cooked, brined beef tongue; if that is hard to source, good ham is the usual substitution. Truffles were priced as a garnish in this book, not a luxury flourish; a small amount of preserved truffle or a few sautéed cremini will carry the dish.
Allemande sauceRanhofer's No. 407 is velouté finished with an egg-yolk-and-cream liaison and lemon, then mounted with butter. It must not boil after the yolks go in or it will curdle. Bind the salpicon with just enough sauce to coat — a wet filling will soften the case within minutes.
Assembly and yieldFill the cases at the moment of service, not before. The molds in this size range yield eight to twelve timbales, which the book intends as one course among many; count two per person as a modern 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 it is organized as a working reference rather than a book to cook from cover to cover — hence the constant numbered cross-references, which assume a kitchen brigade with the stocks and pastes already made. The timbale takes its name from the drum-shaped mold (French timbale, a kettledrum, generally traced back through Spanish to Arabic ṭabl), and by the late nineteenth century the word covered both the pastry case and anything set in a small deep mold. Ranhofer's book is thick with dishes named for patrons, public figures and occasions at the restaurant; the particular Benton honored here is not identified in the text, and the surrounding entries — Beaumarchais, Calaisienne — show how freely such names were assigned. The construction itself, a hollow crust baked empty and filled with a bound salpicon at service, is the direct descendant of the French vol-au-vent and bouchée tradition, and it survived on hotel menus well into the twentieth century.