Timbales a la Renaissance

This is a cross-referenced entry from a professional kitchen manual: almost every component points to another number in the book. Read it as an assembly instruction rather than a standalone recipe, and settle the four sub-preparations before you butter a single mold.

• What you actually have to make firstFour separate preparations underpin it: espagnole (a brown veal-stock sauce thickened with brown roux), meat glaze (stock reduced to a syrup), tomato sauce, and a chicken cream forcemeat. The forcemeat is of the mousseline type — pounded and sieved raw chicken worked cold with cream; consult Ranhofer's No. 75 for his exact proportions — and it is the structural element, so it must be kept cold while you work it.
• SalpiconA salpicon is simply a bound dice. Ranhofer's three-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm, and the uniformity matters because the cubes sit in a ball at the center of a thin-walled mousseline shell; anything larger will tear through it.
• Timbale moldsSmall straight-sided or slightly tapered metal molds; Ranhofer specifies his No. 2, Fig. 137, and the 1¼-inch beet round laid on the bottom indicates a base of roughly that width. Dariole molds, timbale cups or metal ramekins of similar size will serve. Butter them cold and generously — the beet disc has to release cleanly with the turned-out timbale.
• The beet-and-pea medallionThis is pure garnish logic: a thin round of cooked beet about 1¼ inches across, with a ¼-inch hole punched from the middle and a bright green pea set into it. Because the timbale is unmolded upside down, that disc becomes the decorated top. Punch it with a plain pastry tip and pat it dry, or the beet will bleed pink into the pale forcemeat.
• Lining the moldSpread the forcemeat over base and sides in an even layer around ¼ inch thick, set the ball of salpicon in the hollow, then cap and smooth the top. A piping bag gives a more even wall than a spoon, and an uneven wall is a likely cause of collapse.
• Cooking (the part No. 959 supplies)Ranhofer sends you to No. 959 for the cooking; timbales of this kind are poached in a water bath rather than baked dry. Stand the molds in a deep pan, pour in hot water part way up their sides, cover with buttered paper and hold the water well below a boil. Ranhofer gives no temperature or timing here; as a modern equivalent, water at a bare tremble and small molds of roughly 15 to 20 minutes, done when the center is just set and springy. Boiling water makes the mousseline curdle and weep.
• Chateaubriand sauceIn Ranhofer it is a white-wine and shallot reduction finished with meat glaze, butter and herbs — closer to a compound beurre-based sauce than to hollandaise. Serve it in a boat alongside; poured over, it hides the beet medallion the whole recipe is built around.
• YieldNo quantities are given, which is normal for a professional book of this kind. Figure one timbale per person as a hot side dish or entrée course, and scale the salpicon and forcemeat to the number of molds you have.
• TrufflesFresh black truffle at the volume implied here is a serious expense now. Preserved truffle peelings or a small amount of good jarred truffle carry the dish; truffle oil does not, since the point is the dark dice against the pale forcemeat.