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FISH, RISSOLES OF (another way)
Remove the skin and bone from four ounces of cold fish, and mince it finely. Mix with it half a pound of mashed potatoes, season with pepper and salt, add a squeeze of lemon and one egg well beaten and strained, and stir all well together. Form the mixture neatly into the shape of small cutlets, flour them, and fry them in boiling fat to a light golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper, and serve on a hot napkin, garnished with parsley.
A tidy way through leftover cooked fish, and one of the more forgiving recipes in the book — the proportions are two parts potato to one part fish by weight, which is what holds the cutlets together.
- Quantities and yieldFour ounces of fish (about 115 g) with half a pound of mashed potato (225 g) makes roughly six small cutlets, enough for two as a light main or four as a first course. Scale up freely, keeping the 1:2 fish-to-potato ratio.
- The mash matters mostThe potato must be dry and stiff — floury potatoes, baked or boiled and well drained, mashed with no milk or cream. Wet mash gives a mixture that slumps in the pan and absorbs fat instead of crusting.
- Chill before shapingThe original moves straight from mixing to frying. Spreading the mixture on a plate and refrigerating it for half an hour firms it considerably and makes neat cutlet shapes far easier to hold.
- "One egg well beaten and strained"Straining catches the chalazae and stringy white so the egg mixes in smoothly. A whole egg in this quantity of mixture can be slightly slack; hold back a little of the beaten egg and add only as much as brings the mixture together.
- "Boiling fat"Fat hot enough to fry briskly, not literally boiling; in modern terms roughly 350-375F (175-190C). These will also shallow-fry well in a quarter-inch of oil, three to four minutes a side. Since everything in them is already cooked, you are only after colour and a hot centre.
- Which fishCold cooked cod, haddock, hake or salmon all work. Pick over carefully for pin bones — the instruction to remove skin and bone is not a formality when the pieces end up minced fine.
- Serving on a napkinA folded linen napkin on the dish absorbed frying fat. A warm plate lined with paper does the same job; lemon wedges and a caper or tartare sauce are more useful now than the parsley alone.
Fish rissoles belong to the great Victorian economy of leftovers, where cold flesh from yesterday's boiled cod reappeared minced and reshaped rather than being thrown out. The title "another way" shows Cassell's carried at least one further version, this one distinguished by being bound with potato rather than a panada of breadcrumbs or sauce — the same principle as the fishcake and, in Britain, essentially indistinguishable from it. The word rissole comes through French from an older term for a small fried pastry, and in strict French usage still implies a forcemeat wrapped in paste; English cookery books of the nineteenth century used it loosely for almost any small fried patty of minced meat or fish. The mixture is shaped into "small cutlets" rather than plain round cakes, a presentation common in made-over dishes of the period.