No. 980

Princess Timbales

Timbales a la Princesse

Butter some timbale molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), and roll close together around the inside strings of short paste (No. 135), an eighth of an inch in diameter, keeping them as long as possible; begin at the bottom in the center and continue in spirals till the top is reached, then coat the bottom and sides with a chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), laying a ball of white montglas salpicon (No. 747) in the center. Cover the top with a thin lid of the paste and cook in a slow oven for about half an hour; remove the lid, and fill the timbales with a Madeira wine sauce (No. 492); substitute for the cover a half spherical quenelle decorated with truffles cut fancifully; dredged with chopped pistachios, made of chicken cream forcemeat and poached in a slack oven. Serve on a napkin.

← No. 979 Perigordine Timbales Hot Side Dishes No. 981 Timbales a la Renaissance →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Ranhofer assembly rather than a stand-alone recipe: five of its components live at other numbers in The Epicurean, and it presumes you already have forcemeat, salpicon and sauce on hand. Read it as a plan for a garnished individual timbale, and build the parts first.

The hinge: the pastry liningThe decorative element is rope of short paste an eighth of an inch in diameter; Ranhofer says "strings," kept as long as possible, so as few joins as you can manage, coiled from the center of the buttered mold outward and up the sides in a spiral. Chill the ropes firm before coiling or they stretch and break, and press each turn against the last so no gap opens; the bake sets the spiral as the visible outer shell.
Oven heatRanhofer gives no numbers; a "slow oven" is conventionally taken as roughly 300-325F, and the "slack oven" for poaching the quenelle lid as the same or a shade lower. The low heat matters because the quenelle forcemeat will curdle and weep if pushed hot. Half an hour at the lower end for standard timbale molds is a starting point; the filling should be just set to the touch.
Timbale moldsRanhofer points to a particular mold (No. 2, Fig. 137) whose capacity and profile he does not state; read it as a small individual timbale case, one per person. Deep dariole molds or small metal dariole/pudding cups are the closest current equivalent. Butter them heavily, right into the corners.
Quenelle forcemeatHis No. 89 chicken quenelle is raw chicken breast pounded to a paste, sieved, then worked with panada and butter or cream over ice. A food processor does the pounding, but keep everything refrigerator-cold and stop before the mixture warms, or it will break. The "chicken cream forcemeat" for the lid is the same idea with more cream, so it poaches soft.
Montglas salpiconSalpicon a la Montglas is a fine dice bound in a reduced sauce, generally running to truffle, tongue and mushroom, sometimes foie gras. Ranhofer's "white" here presumably points to a pale binding rather than a brown one. Chill the ball until firm before setting it in the center, so it stays put during baking.
The two lidsThe pastry lid is removed after baking and discarded; Ranhofer does not say what it is for. The finished cap is a separately poached dome of chicken cream forcemeat, studded with cut truffle and chopped pistachio, set on after the timbale is filled with sauce. Ranhofer poaches the domes in a slack oven; buttered half-sphere molds, set in a water bath in that oven.
SauceNo. 492 is a Madeira sauce built on reduced brown stock. It goes in warm, and only just before serving, or it soaks the pastry spiral.
Yield and serviceCount one timbale per guest as a hot side dish or entree; a batch of six is a sensible domestic scale. Serving "on a napkin" means a folded linen napkin on the platter, which keeps the molds from sliding and absorbs any seepage.

A Little History

Timbales take their name from the drum-shaped mold (generally traced to Arabic tabl by way of French timbale, a drum or a cup), and by the late nineteenth century they were the standard vehicle for a hot side dish in the grand service: a small individual case, lined and filled, unmolded and garnished. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York across two spells broken in the later 1870s, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system, which is why this entry reads as a string of cross-references rather than a recipe; a kitchen brigade would have had forcemeat, salpicon and Madeira sauce already standing. Dishes styled "a la Princesse" in that era generally signal a white, delicate treatment, and the honorific tells you little more than that. What the page really documents is the economics of the period's restaurant cooking: three separate preparations, a hand-coiled pastry spiral and a decorated poached dome, all for one portion of a side dish.