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Gravy for Rissoles
Take the skin, trimmings, and bones of the meat from which the rissoles have been made. Divide them into small pieces, and put them into a saucepan with a minced onion and a piece of butter the size of a walnut. Turn them about over a quick fire till they are lightly browned, then add a pint of boiling water, a blade of mace, a bunch of parsley, half a dozen peppercorns, and half a slice of toasted bread. Put on the lid of the saucepan, and simmer gently for an hour. Strain; thicken the gravy with a table-spoonful of flour, mixed smoothly with a little cold water, add a table-spoonful of ketchup, and half a salt-spoonful of salt, boil once more, and serve. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for a pint of gravy.
A trimmings gravy built on the scraps left from making rissoles — essentially a fast brown stock finished as a sauce. The whole character depends on the initial browning.
- Brown properly, then stopThe bones, skin and onion need real colour in the butter over high heat — that is where all the flavour comes from, since a pint of water and one hour of simmering cannot extract much on its own. Take it to a deep brown but not black; scorched bone gives a bitter gravy that no amount of ketchup fixes.
- Butter the size of a walnutRoughly 15-30 g, i.e. one to two tablespoons; period sources are not consistent about whether the nut is reckoned shelled or in the shell.
- A blade of maceOne piece of the dried outer covering of nutmeg — roughly 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace if you have no blades, added with the water rather than at the start.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt spoon was around 1/4 teaspoon, so half of one is about 1/8 teaspoon. Season at the end and taste, particularly as the ketchup carries its own salt.
- The toasted breadHalf a slice acts as a thickener and colouring agent, dissolving into the liquid over the hour. It is doing the work a commercial browning would now do; leave it in, it strains out invisibly.
- Ketchup means mushroom or walnut ketchupKetchup probably means mushroom or walnut ketchup -- In Victorian British usage 'ketchup' unqualified most often meant a thin, dark, salty mushroom or walnut condiment rather than a sweet tomato sauce, though tomato ketchup did exist by then. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; Worcestershire sauce, or a teaspoon of soy plus a dash of vinegar, is closer in effect than a sweet tomato sauce.
- ThickeningA tablespoon of flour slaked in cold water to a pint of liquid gives a light pouring gravy. Add it to the simmering strained stock in a stream while whisking, then boil for two to three minutes — flour needs that boil to lose its raw taste and reach full thickening power.
- YieldA pint, about 570 ml. It reduces during the hour's covered simmer, so start with a generous pint of boiling water or top up.
Rissoles — minced cooked meat bound, shaped and fried — were the standard Victorian answer to yesterday's joint, and this gravy is the second half of the same thrift: the skin, bones and trimmings that could not be minced go into the pot to sauce the thing they came from. The "probable cost, 3d" is the point of the entry: like Mrs Beeton before it, Cassell's costed its dishes so that a household could check the kitchen's economy. The half-slice of toast is an older English trick for colouring and thickening gravy, common in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery before bottled gravy brownings and commercial stock cubes made it redundant; mace and a bunch of parsley were common aromatics of the period.