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Beef Rissoles
Mince one pound of cold roast beef, the leaner the better, very fine; add pepper, salt, a few savoury herbs chopped small, and half a teaspoonful of minced lemon-peel; mix all together with half the weight of the beef in bread-crumbs. Bind it with two eggs into a thick paste; form into balls; dip them in white of egg and breadcrumbs, and fry them a rich brown. Serve with a garnish of fried parsley, and with a brown gravy in a tureen; or without the parsley, and the gravy poured round the rissoles on the dish. Time, from eight to ten minutes. Probable cost, without meat, about 6d.
A Victorian way with the Sunday joint: cold roast beef, minced fine and bound into fried croquettes. The technique is sound, but the proportions and the frying want translating.
- The hinge: mince, don't process"Very fine" means hand-chopped or twice through a mincer, so the meat keeps a little texture. A food processor will turn cold roast beef into paste and the rissoles will be dense and pasty.
- Quantities in practiceOne pound of beef takes 8 oz of breadcrumbs. Fresh soft crumbs give a lighter result; dried crumbs absorb more and may need a spoonful of gravy or stock to keep the mixture from being stiff.
- Two eggs is generousWith soft crumbs, two whole eggs can make the paste too wet to shape. Add one, judge the mixture, and add the second only if it will not hold a ball. Chilling the mixture for half an hour makes forming much easier.
- Savoury herbsIn this period that means thyme, parsley, and often marjoram or a little sage. A teaspoon of chopped thyme and a tablespoon of parsley is a reasonable reading.
- Lemon-peelZest only, no white pith, grated or chopped to nothing. Half a teaspoon in a pound of beef is deliberately faint; it lifts reheated meat rather than flavouring it.
- Frying"Fry a rich brown" means hot deep fat; the book gives no temperature, but around 350-360F is the usual modern equivalent. The stated eight to ten minutes suits small balls in fat that deep; in a shallow pan, turn them and expect less. The meat is already cooked, so you are only browning the crust and heating through.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly before they go near the fat, and give them ten to fifteen seconds only. Wet parsley in hot fat spits violently.
- YieldAbout twelve rissoles, serving four as a main course with the brown gravy, or six as a first course.
Rissoles come into English from the French rissole, generally traced through Old French roissole to a Latin root meaning reddish, from the browning, with the sense of a fried pastry being the older French usage rather than the origin; and by the nineteenth century the name had loosened to cover almost anything minced, bound, crumbed and fried. Their place in a book like Cassell's is really economic: a large roast was the centrepiece of a middle-class Sunday, and the days that followed were an exercise in making the remainder appear as something new. The costing tells the story plainly enough "probable cost, without meat, about 6d." prices only the crumbs, eggs and seasoning, because the beef was assumed to be already in the house and already paid for. Frying in deep fat, a garnish of fried parsley and gravy served separately in a tureen are the standard dressings of the period, applied here to what is frankly yesterday's dinner.