Home › Sandwiches › Tomato Timbales
Tomato Timbales
Tomato timbales are made by stewing down some strained tomatoes until quite thick, seasoning with salt, pepper and onion juice and putting away until cold. To one cupful of this add three well-beaten eggs, mix thoroughly, then fill well-buttered timbale moulds. Stand them in a pan of hot water in the oven or put into a steamer and cook slowly until firm in the center as a baked custard would be. This is a delightful luncheon dish.
A savory tomato custard, baked or steamed in small moulds. The whole thing rests on the tomato base being genuinely thick before the eggs go in.
- Reduce further than feels necessary"Stewed down until quite thick" means the consistency of tomato paste loosened slightly — a spoon drawn through should leave a track. Watery puree will not set, and the custard weeps in the mould. Expect to cook 2 lb of fresh tomatoes, or a 28-oz can, down to about a cup.
- Strained tomatoesIn period usage this meant fresh tomatoes cooked and pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seed. Canned passata or plain tomato puree is the closest equivalent; avoid anything already seasoned or sweetened.
- Onion juiceGrate a small onion on a box grater and use the liquid that collects, or press grated onion in a fine sieve. About a teaspoon per cup gives the flavor without the texture. Onion powder is not a good substitute here.
- Timbale mouldsSmall straight-sided metal or ceramic cups, roughly 4 oz each. Ramekins, small custard cups or a muffin tin all work. Butter them heavily and the timbales will turn out cleanly.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only to cook slowly, as for a baked custard; in a modern oven that means a moderate heat, around 325F. Hotter and the eggs curdle at the edges before the center sets. Set the moulds in a pan with hot water reaching halfway up their sides.
- Timing and donenessRoughly twenty-five to thirty-five minutes at about 325F for 4-oz moulds; a knife inserted just off-center comes out clean and the surface no longer ripples when the pan is nudged. Steaming over gentle heat takes about the same. Let them sit five minutes before unmoulding.
- Yield and servingOne cup of tomato base plus three eggs makes about a cup and a half of mixture, enough for three or four small moulds. Turn out onto a plate for a light lunch course, with buttered toast or a green salad; a spoonful of cream sauce or a little melted butter over the top is a common period accompaniment.
The timbale takes its name from the French timbale, a drum-shaped cup, and by the late nineteenth century the word covered any mixture bound with egg and cooked in such a mould. American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s are full of them — chicken, sweetbread, spinach, corn, salmon — because they solved a real problem for the middle-class hostess: a small, tidy, individually portioned dish that could be assembled ahead and cooked in a water bath without much watching. The tomato version belongs to the same moment as tomato jelly salads and cream of tomato soup. Onion juice, rather than chopped onion, may hint at the period's taste for smooth, unbroken textures in ladies' luncheon food, though that is a reader's inference rather than a documented practice.