No. 968

Imperial Timbales

Timbales Imperial

The salpicon to be made of a well reduced supreme sauce (No. 547), adding to it tongue, truffles and mushrooms cut in small Julienne. Cut some narrow bands of truffles, a sixteenth of an inch wide, and six-eighths of an inch long; butter the molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), set a five-eighths of an inch round of truffle at the bottom and on the side close to the bottom a row of quarter inch in diameter rounds of truffles at the top opening of the mold, lay these bands in long triangles around the edge; on the top of each triangle set a three-sixteenth inch round piece truffle; cover the insides of the molds with cream forcemeat (No. 74), and in the center lay a half inch ball of the salpicon, finish filling the mold, poach and dress it the same as for No. 959. A lucullus sauce (No. 490) to be served separately.

← No. 967 Harlequin Timbales Hot Side Dishes No. 969 Irving Timbales →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Delmonico's assembly job rather than a recipe in the modern sense: Ranhofer assumes you already have supreme sauce, cream forcemeat and a stock of truffles on hand, and he numbers them rather than repeating them. The hinge is the forcemeat lining, which must be thick enough to hold the salpicon but thin enough to cook through in a water bath.

What a timbale is hereNot a pastry case but a small buttered mold (a dariole or timbale mold) lined with forcemeat, filled, and poached. Ranhofer's Fig. 137 refers to his own plate of mold shapes; he gives no capacity, though the half-inch ball of salpicon and the fractional-inch truffle cuts imply a small individual mold. Any straight-sided or slightly tapered metal mold of that sort will serve.
Cream forcemeatNo. 74 is a cream-based quenelle farce: pounded and sieved white meat or fish worked with cream until smooth and holding a soft shape. Whatever the exact formula, a farce of this type depends on protein coagulation to set, so it must be kept cold until it goes into the mold or it will break and weep.
SalpiconA salpicon is simply a dice of cooked garnish bound with a thick sauce. "Well reduced" supreme sauce means reduced until it coats a spoon heavily and will not run when spooned into a half-inch ball; a loose sauce will bleed into the forcemeat during poaching.
Poaching, not bakingSet the filled molds in a pan of water held at about 175 to 180F, covered, and cook until the forcemeat is just firm to the fingertip, roughly 15 to 20 minutes for a 3 oz mold. Water at a rolling boil will puff the farce and then collapse it. Rest a minute or two before unmolding so the timbale firms.
The truffle decorationThe rounds and bands are cut from firm black truffle with a small plain cutter and a knife, then laid pattern-side down in the buttered mold; the butter holds them until the forcemeat goes in. Fresh black truffle at these quantities is now a luxury few will spend on. Preserved truffle peelings or blanched black olive give the same graphic effect if not the same perfume; a good cook will admit the difference.
TongueCooked salted or pickled beef tongue, peeled and cut in fine julienne. It was a standard larder item in a nineteenth-century professional kitchen and is still sold cooked at many delicatessens.
Lucullus sauceRanhofer sends his No. 490 to table separately, as directed. Serve it in a sauceboat: poured over, it drowns the truffle pattern that the whole exercise exists to display.
YieldThe original gives none. Reckon one timbale per person as a hot side dish or entrée course, and count on about 2 tablespoons of salpicon and 3 to 4 tablespoons of forcemeat for each.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the timbale section shows the house style at its most decorative: a hot forcemeat mold lined with a truffle mosaic that is visible only after unmolding. The word timbale describes the mold rather than the filling, and is generally traced back through Spanish atabal to Arabic al-tabl, a drum. Naming a sauce Lucullus after the Roman general proverbial for extravagant dining was a nineteenth-century restaurant convention, one of many classical flourishes Delmonico's used to signal that a dish was expensive. What the recipe really records is a kitchen brigade deep enough that a cook could be spared to cut truffle into bands a sixteenth of an inch wide.