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Meat Rissoles, English
Prepare meat--beef, mutton, veal, poultry, or game--as before directed for MEAT CROQUETTES. The rissoles may be made up in the form of cones--egged, bread-crumbed, fried without paste, and served with a gravy. If preferred with paste, cut out double the number of rounds that are required of rissoles; on one round place the mince, egg the edge, and cover with a corresponding round. Fry, first brushing them with egg, of a nice brown; use butter, and drain the rissoles before serving. Send to table on a napkin, garnished with parsley. Time, five or six minutes to fry. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of meat.
This is a leftovers recipe that assumes you have already read the entry for meat croquettes: cooked meat, chopped fine, bound with a very thick sauce and seasoned, then chilled until it can be handled. Everything here concerns the shaping and frying.
- The hinge: chill the mince hardThe forcemeat must be spread on a plate and refrigerated until firm before you shape cones or fill rounds. Warm, loose mince slumps in the pan and bursts the coating, which is the usual way this dish fails.
- "Paste" means pastryIn Victorian usage paste is dough, not a purée. Short paste or trimmings of puff paste are both traditional here; roll it thin, around 2-3 mm, or the fried edge stays raw and heavy.
- Seal the pastry rounds properlyEgg wash the border, press the two rounds together with your fingertips, then crimp with a fork. An unsealed rissole takes on fat and leaks its filling.
- Frying in butterWhole butter at frying heat will brown and then burn well inside five minutes. Use clarified butter or ghee, or a neutral oil with a spoonful of butter for flavour. Shallow-fry at about 350F/175C.
- Five or six minutes is for browning onlyThe meat is already cooked and the filling only needs heating through, so the timing is a colour instruction. Egged and crumbed cones brown faster than pastry-cased ones; judge by the crust.
- The double eggingCones are egged and crumbed; pastry rissoles are brushed with egg before frying, which gives gloss and colour rather than a crust. Do not crumb the pastry version.
- Serving on a napkinA folded linen napkin was the conventional service for fried dishes, and would take up some frying fat at table. Drain on kitchen paper and serve on a warm plate; the napkin is decorative now, and damp linen under hot fried food is a poor idea.
- Yield and cost6d. excluding meat covers the eggs, crumbs, pastry and butter at late nineteenth-century prices. The recipe gives no yield; as a rough guide, about 1 lb of cooked meat plus its binding would make ten or twelve rissoles, enough for four with gravy and a green vegetable.
Rissole comes into English from French, ultimately from a word for something reddened or browned by frying, and by the eighteenth century it meant a small fried parcel of forcemeat, usually in pastry. The heading "English" appears to distinguish this version from a French pattern, and the distinction is largely one of casing and sauce: the English cook is offered the crumbed, pastry-free cone served with gravy as an equal option. What the recipe really documents is the Victorian household economy of cooked meat. A joint was roasted large, appeared cold at the next meal, and its remnants were minced and made presentable a third time. The costing "exclusive of meat" says it plainly enough: the meat was already bought and paid for, and only the crumbs, egg and butter counted against the day's budget.