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Lobster, Rissoles Of
Pick the meat from a small newly-boiled fresh lobster. Mince it finely, and mix with it half a tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of finely-shred parsley, and a pinch of cayenne, and pour upon it the strained juice of half a small lemon. Fry an inch of sliced onion in butter until tender, pour over it a quarter of a pint of cream, simmer for three or four minutes, then put in the minced lobster; add the yolks of two eggs, and stir all over the fire until the eggs are set. Spread the mixture on a dish, and let it remain until cold. Roll out some good puff paste to the thickness of the eighth of an inch. Place small balls of the mince upon it at short distances from each other. Moisten the paste round them with a little water, and cover them with more paste. Press the edges securely, trim them neatly, dredge a little flour over them, and fry them in hot fat until lightly browned. Dish them on a napkin, garnish with parsley, and serve hot. Probable cost of small lobster, 9d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian rissole in the strict sense: a cooked, bound filling sealed in pastry and deep-fried, not the breadcrumbed croquette the word usually suggests now. Two things decide whether it works — the egg binding and the seal.
- The hinge: set the eggs, do not scramble themThe yolks are there to stiffen the cream so the filling can be rolled into balls. Keep the pan over gentle heat and stir constantly; the moment it thickens and coats the spoon, take it off. If it boils it will curdle and weep fat and water into the pastry.
- Chill properly, not just to "cold"Spread the mixture thin on a plate and refrigerate at least two hours, ideally until firm enough to shape without sticking. Warm filling softens puff paste and the parcels burst in the fat.
- A quarter of a pint of cream"A quarter of a pint of cream" -- An imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 5 fl oz, a little over half a US cup. Double or heavy cream is the safer choice here: it gives a richer, stiffer filling and is more forgiving of heat than single cream.
- "An inch of sliced onion"A one-inch slice cut across a peeled onion — roughly one to two tablespoons once chopped. Cook it in butter until soft and completely without colour, as browning would dominate the lobster.
- A small lobster's yieldA one to one-and-a-quarter pound lobster gives roughly 3 to 5 oz of picked meat, tail, claws and knuckles together. Frozen lobster meat works, but drain and blot it well or the filling will be slack.
- Sealing the parcelsMoisten only the ring of paste immediately around each ball, press out trapped air as you lay the top sheet down, and press firmly from the filling outward. Trim with a cutter rather than a knife so the layered edges are cut clean and seal rather than smear.
- Frying temperature"Hot fat" is left to the cook's judgement; somewhere in the region of 350-375F suits puff paste. Hotter and the outside browns before the layers have puffed; cooler and the pastry drinks fat. Fry a few at a time and drain on paper, not directly on the serving napkin.
- Yield and servingFive or six as a hot first course or savoury, allowing two or three small rissoles each — not as a main dish. The folded napkin was there to absorb frying fat and keep them from sliding; a rack-drained plate does the same job.
Rissole comes through French from an older form associated with browning or reddening in cooking, and in nineteenth-century English kitchens the word kept a fairly literal sense: a cooked, well-seasoned mince enclosed in paste and fried, distinct from the breadcrumbed croquette it is often confused with today. Cassell's places it among the lobster entries at a time when lobster was a familiar item in London fish shops, though the quoted ninepence for a small lobster was still a real outlay for a modest household. The recipe's logic is thoroughly Victorian: a small quantity of expensive meat stretched with cream, egg and pastry into enough for six. The technique of binding minced shellfish with an egg-and-cream liaison, chilling it and shaping it belongs to the same family as the era's croquettes, quenelles and cromesquis, all ways of turning leftovers or a single small fish into a hot, formal-looking dish.