No. 974

Mentana Timbales

Timbales a la Mentana

The salpicon to be made of chicken livers a la Duxelle, (see below), thickened with egg-yolks, to be used when cold. Butter some timbale molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), and place on the bottom a one inch in diameter slice of truffle, cut away the center with a three-quarters of an inch vegetable cutter, and replace the truffle by a piece of red beef tongue. Decorate the sides of the mold with thin, eighth of an inch wide strips of tongue, laid on slanting, having ten strips in all, and in the center between every one, a round bit of truffle measuring three-sixteenths of an inch across, with a smaller one one-eighth of an inch on the top and bottom, also laid on slanting, making three round bits of truffle between the two strips of tongue. Fill the insides and bottom with a chicken and cream forcemeat (No. 75), and in the center lay a ball of the prepared salpicon; then more forcemeat, and finish them as for No. 959. Serve separately a perigueux (No. 517) and tomato sauce (No. 549) mixed.

For salpicon of chicken livers a la Duxelle, cut some chicken livers in quarter inch squares; fry them in butter with a little shallot, mushroom, and truffles, all chopped finely, and mingle with a little well reduced half-glaze (No. 400).

← No. 973 Marly Timbales Hot Side Dishes No. 975 Montgomery Timbales →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a dish of assembly rather than technique: a decorated mold, a fine chicken forcemeat, and a cold liver salpicon at the center. Ranhofer wrote for a brigade with numbered cross-references at hand, so several components are named rather than given.

The hinge: poach, never boilRanhofer only says to finish them as for No. 959, which is not reproduced here; timbales of this type are normally set in a bain-marie in a moderate oven with the water held at a bare tremble rather than allowed to boil. A cream forcemeat that reaches a boil breaks and weeps, and the decoration slides off the sides.
The cross-referencesNo. 75 is Ranhofer's chicken and cream forcemeat, No. 400 a half-glaze, No. 517 sauce Perigueux, No. 549 tomato sauce. None are reproduced here; without the full book you will need modern equivalents, and a mousseline forcemeat of raw chicken breast, egg white and cream stands in for No. 75.
Timbale moldsRanhofer refers to a mold illustrated in his Fig. 137, not reproduced here; the one-inch truffle disk laid on the bottom and the ten slanting strips up the sides indicate a small individual mold. Modern dariole molds or ramekins of similar size work; anything wider changes the cooking time and the proportion of decoration to filling.
Salpicon means small diceA salpicon is simply a mixture cut in small uniform dice bound with a sauce. Here quarter-inch livers cooked with shallot, mushroom and truffle, bound with reduced half-glaze and egg yolk, then chilled hard so it can be rolled into a ball and buried in the forcemeat.
DuxellesHere "a la Duxelle" signals the finely chopped mushroom-and-shallot base, which Ranhofer writes out in the recipe itself rather than cross-referencing. Chop the mushrooms fine and cook out their water before the livers go in, or the salpicon will be loose.
Buttering and decoratingButter the molds and chill them until the butter is set before laying in the truffle and tongue. Warm butter will not hold the strips in place while the forcemeat is piped in.
Half-glaze and PerigueuxHalf-glaze is demi-glace: brown stock and espagnole reduced until it coats. Perigueux is that sauce finished with chopped truffle and Madeira; Ranhofer gives no proportion for the mixture with tomato sauce, and cutting it with tomato lightens it and stretches the truffle.
Tongue"Red beef tongue" is cured, cooked tongue, valued as much for its color against black truffle as for flavor. Good deli-cut cured tongue, sliced thin, gives the same effect; the round plug and the narrow strips both need to be cut to the sizes the recipe specifies.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Figure one timbale per person as a hot side dish or first course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in thousands of numbered entries, each assuming the others. Timbales of this kind - a mold lined with cut truffle and scarlet tongue in a deliberate geometric pattern, filled with a pale forcemeat and turned out whole - belong to the high decorative style of late nineteenth-century French service, where the visual pattern was the point and the flavors were kept mild so as not to compete. The names are mostly commemorative: Ranhofer titled dishes after places, patrons and events, and Mentana refers to the 1867 battle near Rome in the campaigns around Italian unification, a name that would still have carried some currency with diners in the 1890s. Nothing about the dish is Italian; the label is a nod to the events in the newspapers of the era rather than a claim about origin.