No. 975

Montgomery Timbales

Timbales a la Montgomery

Prepare a pheasant salpicon with truffles and mushrooms added, mixing them in with a veloute sauce (No. 415), add a little meat glaze (No. 402), and leave till cold. Butter a round timbale mold, having a round identation at the bottom; decorate the whole length of the flat side with strips of tongue, and place a dot of truffle an eighth of an inch in diameter on the top of each strip, having eight in all; dredge over the sides with finely chopped pistachios, and cover the bottom and sides with a delicate pheasant game quenelle forcemeat (No. 91), and set in the center a ball of the salpicon; fill the mold with some more of the same forcemeat, poach and dress (No. 959), place on top a small round croquette three-quarters of an inch in diameter made of the salpicon. Serve separately a veloute sauce (No. 415), finished with essence of game (No. 389).

← No. 974 Mentana Timbales Hot Side Dishes No. 976 Mosaic Timbales →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is one of Ranhofer's assembly pieces: nothing here is difficult on its own, but the dish is a stack of four cross-referenced preparations, and the whole thing stands or falls on the forcemeat. Read it as a construction diagram rather than a recipe.

The hinge: poach, never boilThe lined mold goes into a water bath held below a simmer, never boiling. Boiling water makes the quenelle forcemeat break and weep, and the timbale can collapse when unmolded. Small individual molds take roughly 20-25 minutes; they are done when the center is just firm to a fingertip.
SalpiconNot a sauce but a garnish of cooked meat cut into precise small dice, here pheasant with truffle and mushroom, bound with velouté and a little glaze. Bind it stiffly and chill it thoroughly, or the ball at the center will not hold its shape while the forcemeat sets around it.
Meat glaze (No. 402)Glace de viande: brown stock reduced until it sets to a firm, sliceable jelly. Commercial demi-glace or reduced veal stock concentrate stands in. A teaspoon or so per cup of salpicon is enough; it is there for depth and body, not flavor you should be able to name.
Quenelle forcemeat (No. 91)Raw game flesh pounded with panada, egg and cream, then sieved. A food processor does the pounding, but keep everything ice-cold and pass the mixture through a drum sieve or fine strainer afterward if you want the smooth texture the decoration depends on. Poach a teaspoonful to check seasoning and set before lining the molds.
PheasantFarmed birds are widely available and are what to use; a wild bird will be leaner and tougher and needs longer braising before it can be diced. If you substitute, guinea fowl or dark chicken meat with a game-stock velouté is closer than turkey.
Tongue and the decorationThe strips are pickled or brined beef tongue, cut thin for color contrast against the pale forcemeat. Butter the mold, lay the decoration against the buttered surface first, then line carefully with forcemeat so the pattern is not disturbed. Chilling the mold before lining makes this considerably easier.
Timbale moldsSmall metal timbale or dariole molds. The "round indentation at the bottom" is presumably a small dome in the base that becomes the crown of the turned-out timbale, and is where the croquette sits. A plain dariole or a small ramekin works; you simply lose that detail.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no count, but this is one mold per person as an entree in a long menu, served hot with the finished veloute passed separately in a sauceboat.

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 less like a cookbook than like a professional reference: numbered preparations that call on other numbered preparations, so that a single dish such as this one draws on four separate entries scattered through the volume. The naming is characteristic of the period's restaurant kitchens, where dishes were christened after patrons, places and occasions; Ranhofer's timbale sequence runs through Mentana, Montgomery and Mosaic in a row, and in most cases the specific reference is now lost. Timbales themselves take their name from the drum-shaped mold — timbale is French for a kettledrum, from the Arabic al-tabl — and the technique of lining a mold with forcemeat, filling it with a bound garnish and poaching it in a bain-marie was standard grande cuisine practice long before Ranhofer, running back through Carême. Pheasant on an American restaurant menu of the 1890s signaled expense and season, and the tongue strips, truffle dots and chopped pistachio were the visual grammar of a kitchen that expected diners to look at a dish before eating it.