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Fish, Rissoles Of
To any quantity or kind of cold cooked fish, weighed after the bones and skin have been removed, add a third part of grated bread-crumbs, a finely-minced boiled onion, some cold melted butter, and the yolks of two eggs; season with pepper and salt. Make puff paste, roll it thin, and cut it into squares of two inches. Place about a tea-spoonful of the mince on each square, and fold over with paste. Wet the edges of the dough, before closing them, that they may adhere, and fry in boiling fat, first egging and covering the rissoles with bread-crumbs. Garnish with fried parsley. Time, fry till lightly browned. Probable cost, 8d., exclusive of the fish.
A Victorian way of using up cooked fish: a bound mince sealed in puff paste, crumbed and deep-fried. The wording hides two things a modern cook needs to know — what "melted butter" meant, and how wet the mixture should be.
- "Cold melted butter"In nineteenth-century British cookery melted butter usually means a flour-thickened butter sauce, close to a thin butter that has been melted, though the recipe may intend either. If you read it as the sauce, use two or three tablespoons of a stiff white sauce, cooled, to bind the mince.
- ProportionsThe rule is by weight: fish picked clean of skin and bone, plus a third of that weight in dry breadcrumbs. For 12 oz of cooked fish that is 4 oz of crumbs, one small boiled onion, and the two yolks. Two yolks is generous for a small batch — hold back one if the mix goes slack.
- The filling must be cold and firmThis is the hinge. A warm or loose mince will steam inside the paste, burst a seam, and empty into the fat. Chill the mixture until it can be shaped between two spoons before you fill anything.
- SealingTwo-inch squares folded to triangles hold about a teaspoon and no more. Wet the edges, press out trapped air, and crimp firmly; overfilled rissoles are the usual cause of failure.
- Egg and crumb over puff pasteThe double coating gives a second crust, though the book does not say why it was used. Let the crumbed rissoles rest 20 minutes in the refrigerator so the coating sets and the paste re-chills.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat at frying heat. Work at 350–360F (175–180C). Puff paste needs a few minutes to cook through, so hotter fat browns the crumbs before the pastry is done. "Fry till lightly browned" is roughly three to four minutes.
- Fried parsleyDry, very dry, curly parsley dropped into the fat for a few seconds after the rissoles come out. It spits if wet, and scorches quickly, so a few seconds is enough.
- Yield and servingServing -- Any firm cooked white fish, salmon or smoked haddock works.
- "Probable cost, 8d."The eightpence covers the paste, crumbs, onion, eggs and frying fat only; the recipe says "exclusive of the fish", leaving the cook to price the dish against whatever fish was cheap that morning.
Rissoles came into English cookery from the French rissole, a fried pastry turnover whose name is generally traced to Old French for something reddened or browned by cooking. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s the word covered two rather different things in British kitchens: a bound mince rolled in crumbs and fried without any pastry, and this older sort, where the mince is enclosed in paste first. The recipe belongs squarely to the Victorian economy of leftovers — it opens "to any quantity or kind of cold cooked fish", which is the voice of a book written for households where Friday's boiled cod had to reappear on Saturday looking like something else. The costing in pence, excluding the fish itself, makes the point plainly: the fish was already bought and paid for, and what the cook was being sold here was a way to disguise it.