No. 982

Ristori Timbales

Timbales a la Ristori

Prepare a salpicon of truffles, mushrooms and artichoke bottoms cut into three-sixteenth inch squares, and mingled with an allemande sauce (No. 407), then put away to get cold. Butter the inside of timbale molds (No. 2, Fig. 137), decorate the bottoms with a thin round of truffle, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and on the top and bottom of the sides lay inverted triangles of tongue, or the red part of lobster, having twenty-four in all, twelve on the top, and twelve on the bottom; and in the center of the side range symmetrically twelve small rounds of truffle to form a circle. Fill the bottom and sides with a chicken and cream forcemeat (No. 75), well mixed, and in the middle set a half inch ball of the salpicon; finish with more forcemeat, then poach and unmold as explained in No. 959. A veloute sauce (No. 415) with finely chopped truffle sauce (No. 551), to be served separately.

← No. 981 Timbales a la Renaissance Hot Side Dishes No. 983 Rothschild Timeales →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already running, so nearly every component is a cross-reference. The whole dish rests on one thing: a chicken forcemeat smooth and cold enough to hold a decoration in place while it poaches.

What the cross-references areAllemande is a veloute enriched with egg yolk and cream; veloute is a white stock thickened with blond roux. No. 75 is a chicken forcemeat pounded to a paste with cream, i.e. a mousseline. No. 551 is a truffle sauce. All can be made from any current recipe for the same preparations.
SalpiconSimply a dice of cooked garnish bound in thick sauce. Cut the truffle, mushroom and artichoke bottoms to about 5 mm and use only enough allemande to bind, then chill hard. A wet salpicon will bleed into the forcemeat and blur the lining.
The moldsTimbale molds here are small straight-sided or slightly tapered cups; the book points to a particular mold (No. 2, Fig. 137) but gives no capacity. Butter them and chill the butter until firm before setting the truffle and tongue in place, or the decoration slides when you pipe in the forcemeat.
Building the liningLine the buttered, decorated mold with a thin, even coat of forcemeat before the salpicon goes in the centre, then close with more forcemeat. Piping bag rather than spoon, and tap the mold to settle it; air pockets show as craters on the unmolded timbale.
Poaching, not bakingThese are poached in a bain-marie, covered, with the water held below a simmer around 170-175F; in a modern oven, a water bath at 325F works. They are done when the centre reaches about 165F and the surface is just springy, roughly 20-25 minutes for this size. Boiling water makes the mousseline curdle and weep.
UnmoldingRest a minute or two, blot the top, then invert onto a warm plate. Any liquid that escapes should be poured off rather than served, as it will thin the sauce.
Truffle in quantityThe recipe uses truffle freely as a decorative element, at a time when it was more readily available to a restaurant kitchen than it is now. Where that is out of reach, the visual role can be filled by cooked mushroom, black olive or blanched leek, with a small amount of good truffle reserved for the sauce.
YieldNot stated. One timbale of this size is a single hot side-dish portion; the number produced depends on the quantities given in the cross-referenced forcemeat and sauce recipes.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this timbale belongs to its long run of hot side dishes named after singers, actors and financiers who ate there. The Ristori of the title is generally taken to be Adelaide Ristori, the Italian tragedienne whose American tours in the 1860s and 1870s made her a name that a New York menu could trade on; Ranhofer's neighbouring entries honour the Rothschilds in exactly the same spirit. What the recipe really shows is how the nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen worked: the truffle rounds, the twenty-four inverted triangles of tongue, the circle of twelve dots are all decoration applied inside the mold so it emerges as a finished pattern, a discipline that assumed a large staff, a numbered system of cross-referenced sauces, and diners who expected to be shown labour they had not seen performed.