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Fricandelles, Fried
Mince first, and then pound together, beef and suet, in the proportion of a quarter of a pound of suet to one pound of meat. Roast, or any cold beef may be used, but uncooked meat is best. Smooth to a paste with an egg or two, and a little water. Add three ounces of fine bread-crumbs, a little shredded onion, salt, and pepper. Make into egg-shaped balls, and fry in butter to a delicate brown; or, they may be baked with a mixture of mashed potatoes as a substitute for bread, and fat bacon instead of suet. Time, ten minutes to fry. Beef, 1s. per pound.
A plain minced-beef rissole with suet as the only fat and enrichment. The proportions are the recipe's substance; everything else is seasoning and shaping.
- The ratio4 oz suet to 1 lb beef, plus 3 oz fine breadcrumbs and one or two eggs. That is 25 percent added fat by weight of the meat; if you use standard 80/20 mince, cut the suet to about 2 oz or the balls will collapse in the pan. The recipe itself says nothing about the leanness of the beef.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold shredded in some butchers and supermarkets, or ask a butcher for the block and grate it frozen. Packaged "vegetable suet" is palm and rice flour and behaves differently. The recipe's fat bacon, offered as part of the baked variation, is the easier route and adds salt, so season lightly.
- Mince, then poundTwo operations, not one. Grinding gives you the texture; pounding to a paste with egg and a little water develops the meat proteins so the balls hold together. A food processor pulsed in short bursts does both, but stop while there is still some grain left or the result is springy and sausage-like.
- Uncooked meat is bestThe note is worth heeding. Cold roast beef has already lost its juices and its binding power, and fricandelles made from it need the egg to do all the work. Expect a drier, more crumbly ball.
- Size and frying timeTen minutes suits balls the size of a small hen's egg, around 2 oz each. Fry in butter over medium heat, turning to brown all sides — butter alone will darken, so a spoonful of neutral oil with it helps. Since the mixture is raw beef, cook to 160F at the centre; anything larger than egg-sized will brown before it is done.
- The baked variationMashed potato replaces the breadcrumbs and bacon fat replaces the suet, but no oven setting is given. A moderate oven, 350F, for 25 to 30 minutes browns them without drying the potato-bound mixture, which sets softer than the fried version.
- YieldOne pound of beef with the suet, crumbs and egg makes about 12 egg-shaped balls, enough for four as a main course with potatoes and a gravy or tomato sauce.
- The price line"Beef, 1s. per pound" is the book's costing note for the householder, not an instruction. It dates the entry to a period when a shilling a pound was ordinary butcher's beef.
Fricandelle came into English cookery books from the French and Flemish kitchens, where its name is often traced to fricandeau and its diminutives, covering various shaped preparations of minced or larded meat; by the nineteenth century the word had settled in Britain to mean something close to a rissole or forcemeat ball. Cassell's places it among the plain, economical entries: the recipe prefers uncooked meat while permitting cold roast beef as a fallback, gives a costing per pound, and offers a second version built on mashed potato and bacon fat. That double instruction is characteristic of the book, which was written for kitchens where the fat available depended on what had been cooked that week. The same mixture, differently shaped and seasoned, survives across northern Europe as the Danish and Dutch frikadel and the German Frikadelle.