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Game, Rissoles Of
Take the remains of cold game, remove the skin and gristle, and pound the meat in a mortar, with one dessert-spoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of pepper, the quarter of a small nutmeg, grated, half a pound of bread-crumbs, soaked in milk and drained, three table-spoonfuls of finely-chopped mushrooms, a piece of butter, and the yolk of an egg, to every pound of meat. Enclose in pastry (see RISSOLES), or, if preferred, make into balls, dredge them with flour, and dip them in beaten egg and bread-crumbs. Fry them in hot butter or lard till lightly browned, drain on a little blotting-paper, and serve piled high on a napkin. Garnish with parsley, and send brown sauce to table with them. Time, ten minutes to fry. Sufficient, one pound of meat, etc., for three persons. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the cold game.
A Victorian way of using up the last of a roast pheasant, partridge or hare. The method is sound; the seasoning and the bread ratio are the two things to look at before you start.
- The seasoning is very heavyA dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons, so this is two teaspoons of salt plus a teaspoon of pepper per pound of meat — roughly three times what a modern palate wants. Start with half a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper, then taste a small fried spoonful of the mixture before shaping the rest.
- Drain the panade hardHalf a pound of soaked crumbs to a pound of meat is a lot of filler and, if wet, it will make a paste that bursts in the fat. Squeeze the milk-soaked bread out firmly in your hands or in a cloth; if the mixture still will not hold a ball, add crumbs dry rather than more egg.
- Mortar, or a food processorShort pulses only. Game is lean and over-processing turns it to a rubbery emulsion — you want a coarse, slightly fibrous paste with visible flecks of meat.
- "Cold game"Any cooked dark-fleshed bird or furred game: pheasant, partridge, grouse, pigeon, venison, rabbit or hare. Roast duck or dark turkey meat stands in perfectly well. Pick out every scrap of shot, skin, sinew and small bone before pounding.
- FryingButter alone will brown too fast at the temperature needed; use clarified butter, lard or a neutral oil at 350–375F. Ten minutes is right only for large balls fried gently — small rissoles are done in three or four minutes, and since the meat is already cooked you are only browning the crust and heating the centre through to 165F.
- Blotting-paperKitchen paper. The Victorian sheets were unsized and unprinted; modern paper towel does the same job.
- Brown sauceNot the bottled condiment. This means a demi-glace or espagnole — a roux-based gravy built on game or beef stock, ideally deglazed with the roasting juices from the original bird and finished with a splash of port or Madeira.
- YieldOne pound of meat plus the crumbs and egg should make somewhere around eight to ten rissoles, though the recipe gives only its own figure of three servings. As a modern starter with sauce and a salad it will do four.
Rissole comes to English from the French rissole, in turn from Old French roissole and ultimately the Latin for reddened or browned — the name describes the colour of the crust rather than what is inside it. Cassell's places this among the great family of Victorian re-made dishes: a country house or a well-off town kitchen roasted whole birds for the table, and the cold remains came back the next day pounded, seasoned and fried, with an explicit costing (sixpence, exclusive of the game) so the housekeeper could see the economy of it. The forcemeat formula here — pounded meat, a milk-soaked bread panade, egg yolk, nutmeg, mushrooms — is the standard nineteenth-century farce, and the same mixture with different handling becomes a quenelle, a croquette or the stuffing for a raised pie. The instruction to pile them high on a folded napkin was a serving convention of the period, the linen absorbing any last grease and keeping the fried crust from steaming on a cold dish.