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Timbales of Fish, Cardinal
Remove skin and bones from one and a half pounds fresh salmon, chop it very finely, then place in a mortar with three egg yolks, one light teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne, a saltspoon grated nutmeg and half teaspoon anchovy essence. Thoroughly pound to a smooth pulp, remove, press through a sieve into a bowl and place bowl on ice.
Beat up two gills cream to a stiff froth and gradually incorporate it with the force, sharply mixing with whisk while doing so. Lightly butter six individual pudding moulds, place a round piece of Spanish sweet pepper at the bottom of each mould, then fill up with the force. Place them on a tin, pour hot water in the tin up to half their height, cover them with a lightly buttered paper, set in oven for twenty minutes, remove and unmould on a hot dish. Reduce in a saucepan two gills tomato sauce to half the quantity, pour the sauce around the timbales and serve.
A salmon mousseline baked in a water bath — essentially a cold-emulsion forcemeat, so temperature control matters more than anything else here. The original assumes you know what a moderate oven is and that "force" means forcemeat.
- The hinge: keep it coldThe cream is held by a cold protein emulsion. Chill the salmon, the bowl, the cream and the blade; if the puree is allowed to warm it is liable to break in the oven and weep water and fat. The instruction to set the bowl on ice is not decorative.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is 1 cup and two gills of tomato sauce is 1 cup, reduced to 1/2. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, so the seasoning reads as 1/2 teaspoon cayenne and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.
- CayenneHalf a teaspoon of cayenne in 1 1/2 lb of fish is aggressive by current taste and will fight the salmon. A generous pinch gives the faint warmth the dish wants; the "cardinal" colour comes from the sauce and pepper, not the heat.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does in 30 seconds what the mortar did in ten minutes. Pulse the fish with the yolks and seasoning to a paste, then still push it through a sieve — that step removes sinew and is what makes the texture silky. Fold in the whipped cream by hand.
- Anchovy essenceA thin Victorian-era anchovy sauce, saltier and more liquid than modern paste. Use about 1/4 teaspoon anchovy paste loosened with a little water, and taste before adding the light teaspoon of salt the recipe calls for.
- Spanish sweet pepperCanned or jarred pimiento, patted dry. A round cut from a roasted red pepper does the same job: it sits on the bottom of the mould and becomes the red top when unmoulded.
- Oven and donenessThe book omits the temperature; 325-350F is right for a bain-marie. Twenty minutes suits small moulds of roughly 4 oz, though the recipe does not give a size — the centre should read 145F and a skewer should come out clean and hot. Overbaked mousseline turns spongy and squeezes out liquid.
- Yield and servingSix small timbales, enough for six as a first course or three as a light main. Unmould onto a warmed dish and sauce at the last moment; they cool quickly.
In classical French kitchen language à la cardinal means red — conventionally explained by a cardinal's robes — and generally signals a lobster-based sauce, sometimes tinted with lobster coral or paprika. This version reaches the same colour more cheaply with reduced tomato sauce and a disc of Spanish pimiento set at the bottom of each mould. The technique itself is the mousseline forcemeat described in the Escoffier-era repertoire: raw fish pounded with egg, sieved, then lightened with whipped cream and set in small moulds in a water bath. It belonged to the hotel and dinner-party repertoire, where a course of individual timbales showed a well-drilled kitchen and, worked by mortar and sieve, a great deal of arm work.