Is the timbale ready for His Highness, chef? The fish course has been served.” Behind me stood the butler to King, of England. I turned and put the silver server. with its shining dome into the waiting white gloved hands. The dish under the dome was one of the King's favorites, a timbale de ris de veau à la Régence.
We were in the kitchen of the house on Grosvenot Square, where England's Edward VII conducted a personal life aside and apart from his public life and duties of state. Those were years of royal opulence, when the gourmet king gave famous dinner parties for six or eight close friends, diners intimes. They were diners par excellence as well, because the King's friends, for the most part, were counted among the world's greatest connoisseurs of food and wine. I, a sous-chef at the Ritz in London, was in the kitchen of the Grosvenor House because of the King's devotion to my employer. César Ritz, and to the cuisine of the Ritz Hotels.
When Edward was Prince of Wales, he used to say. “Where Ritz goes, I go.” When the Ritz Motel opened its doors on the place Vendôme, Edward transferred his Paris headquarters at once from the Bristol. In London he entertained regularly at gay parties at the Carlton, which was another Ritz hotel. But being a king had its disadvantages. As such. Edward could no longer give parties in public places whenever and wherever he pleased without risking criticism, so he brought the flavor of the Ritz to the kitchens of the house on Grosvenor Square.
The dishes that King Edward ordered for his parties at Grosvenor House were the finest of the spécialités of French baute cuisine, dishes he had enjoyed at César Ritz's famous hostelries and at the great châteaux where he had so frequently been the guest of France's first families.
The custom of not expecting the regular staff of a household to manage the fine cookery for special functions is typically a French one. Monsieur Malley, who was my superior in charge of the kitchens at the London Ritz. knew that I had served my apprenticeship in a château section of France and. like himself, knew the fine points of catering to the elegant soirées given by the French aristocracy in the neighborhood of Moulins. Those soirées had been for both of us a dress rehearsal for the dinners served to Edward VII at the turn of the century, when Great Britain was at the peak of her power and glory and her king set the standard for a comparable peak in the art of fine living. Chef Malley had every reason to believe that I would know how to handle the special dinner parties at Grosvenor House, for I had worked with him at the Paris Ritz before we both went over to London, he to become chef de cuisine and I the sauce chef under him. So when chef Malley was called upon to cater to the parties at Grosvenor House, he automatically asked for my assistance, and I was prepared to discharge the responsibility.
One thing that I was not prepared for was the fine kitchen that Grosvenor House, in common with many other London mansions, had, It was far superior to any I had ever seen in a private home in France and would have put many a small restaurant kitchen in New York to shame, even today. And, remember, this was fifty or more years ago. There was all the equipment one would want to work with, and everything was in perfect order, immaculate from the tiled floors the warming ovens on the ranges. There were even a fireplace which to grill meats and fish and a rôtisserie arrangement so that meat and poultry could be roasted on a spit.
Not the least of the advantages of the royal kitchen were the rosy-cheeked English kitchemaids, always three or four of them dancing attendance on us, fetching this, fixing that, cleaning up here, offering the help of an extra pair of hands there. My years in London could hardly have been more pleasant, but not the least of the reasons were the kindness, courtesy, and friendliness which these people who served their king offered a Frenchman who had hardly learned to speak their language.
All these memories came tumbling through my mind when I started to write about timbales, because I cannot recall a single royal dinner where a timbale was not on the menu. They were, as I said before, one of the King's favorite dishes. In fact, every elaborate menu of those days included a timbale. Usually it was the first entree, coming to the table after the fish course. If the timbale was filled with fish, it took the place of both fish course and first entree. In the early days of the old Ritz in New York, timbales were always on the menu and were always included in the menu for private dinner parties as well. But with the less leisurely meals served today and with the consequent elimination of many a gourmet's delight for the sake of hurried and less expensive eating, timbales have disappeared, unfortunately, from most caries du jour.
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