Home › The World's Kitchen › Timbales of Fish, Cream Sauce
Timbales of Fish, Cream Sauce
Remove skin and bones from a pound and a half of either fresh halibut or codfish. Chop very fine, then place in a mortar with two egg yolks one light teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg and half teaspoon anchovy essence; then thoroughly pound to a smooth pulp, remove and press through a sieve into a bowl and place on ice. Beat up one and a half gills cream to a stiff froth and gradually incorporate with the force, sharply mixing with a whisk while so doing. Lightly butter six individual pudding moulds, place a very thin slice of truffle at the bottom of each, fill with the preparation, place on a tin, pour hot water up to half their height, cover with lightly buttered paper and set in oven twenty minutes. Remove, unmould on a hot dish. Pour a cream sauce around and serve.
A classic cold-mousseline forcemeat: raw fish, egg yolk and whipped cream bound by nothing but protein and cold, baked gently in a water bath. Temperature control is the whole recipe.
- Keep everything coldThe hinge is temperature. Fish, bowl, blade and cream must all be refrigerator-cold or the emulsion breaks and the timbales weep fat and water in the oven. Chill the purée on ice as directed before the cream goes in, and work quickly once it does.
- "Force" and "anchovy essence""Force" is forcemeat, the pounded fish paste itself. Anchovy essence was a bottled savory concentrate; a half teaspoon of anchovy paste, or a scant teaspoon of colatura or good fish sauce, does the same job.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills is 3/4 cup heavy cream. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon: two saltspoons of cayenne is roughly 1/2 teaspoon, which is genuinely hot for a delicate mousseline. Start with half that if you want the fish to show.
- The mortarA food processor replaces the mortar entirely. Pulse the fish with the yolks and seasonings to a paste, then still push it through a fine sieve or tamis; that step removes sinew and is what gives the finished timbale its silk.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe names none. Bake at 325F, no hotter; a fast oven will curdle the custard-like set before the centers cook. Water in the pan should be hot but not simmering.
- DonenessTwenty minutes suits small moulds; this quantity fills six of roughly 4 to 5 oz. The timbales are done when set to a gentle wobble and the center reads 145F. Overbaked they turn spongy and shrink from the mould.
- Truffle and unmouldingThe truffle slice becomes the decorative top once inverted. Butter the moulds well, and run a thin knife around each before turning out onto a warm dish.
- YieldSix individual moulds, a first course for six. Any plain cream sauce works: a velouté made with fish stock finished with cream, or a béchamel loosened with the cooking liquid.
Timbales take their name from the French timbale, a drum-shaped cup, and the word came to cover both the mould and anything baked in one. The technique here is the classic mousseline forcemeat of nineteenth-century French professional kitchens, carried into American hotel and club cooking, where a pounded fish farce lightened with whipped cream was one way to serve halibut or cod at the elegant end of a menu. That such a dish appears in a book of international recipes says something about the period: French restaurant practice was the assumed common language of ambitious cooking, and truffle slices, anchovy essence and individual moulds were the marks of a household that kept, or aspired to keep, a trained cook.