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Pancakes, Rissoles
Prepare a pint of batter as for plain pancakes, and in making it substitute pepper and salt for sugar and nutmeg. Mince a pound of cold veal or beef very finely, and season it with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and grated lemon-rind. Fry a pancake in the usual way, and when it is set, and lightly browned, put half a cupful of the mince in the centre, and cover it by folding over the ends and the sides; leave the pancake in the pan a few minutes longer to heat the meat, and as each rissole is finished, place it on an inverted sieve before the fire to drain, until the rest are ready for serving; dish the rissoles on a hot napkin, and garnish with parsley. Time to fry, eight minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A savoury pancake wrapped round seasoned cold meat — Victorian leftover cookery, and it stands or falls on whether the filling is moist enough.
- The hinge: moisten the minceA pound of finely minced cold roast is dry on its own, and the recipe gives it nothing but seasoning. Bind it with two or three tablespoons of gravy, stock or thick bechamel until it just holds together, or the finished rissole eats like sawdust in a napkin.
- A pint of batterAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 2.5 US cups. A plain pancake batter at this scale is roughly 4 oz (1 cup) flour, 2 eggs and the milk to make up the pint — thin, crepe-style, not a raised American pancake. Season it with salt and a good grind of pepper and leave out any sugar entirely.
- Cold veal or beefThe recipe assumes yesterday's roast. Any cooked meat works, but it must be cooked already: this method heats the filling through rather than cooking it. Mince by hand or pulse briefly in a processor — a paste will not do.
- Nutmeg and lemon-rindBoth are load-bearing here, not garnish. Grate them fresh; pre-ground nutmeg and bottled zest give none of the lift that keeps a plate of fried meat from tasting flat.
- Heating the filling"A few minutes longer" is vague. Cooked meat being reheated should reach 74C/165F in the centre, so allow three or four minutes with the folded rissole turned once, over moderate heat so the pancake browns rather than scorches.
- Eight minutes to fryProbably the time for one rissole, covering the pancake, the filling, folding and heating through, though the book does not say. Working one at a time in a single pan, five or six rissoles will take you most of an hour, which is why the recipe bothers with the draining arrangement.
- Inverted sieve before the fireA wire rack over a tray in a 100C/200F oven does the same job: keeps the underside from steaming while the batch is finished.
- Hot napkinA folded linen cloth on a warmed serving dish, which absorbs frying fat and looks deliberate. A warmed platter lined with paper is the modern equivalent.
- YieldFive or six as stated, as a light supper or luncheon dish rather than a main course. The 1s. 3d. is Victorian pricing.
The name is generally traced to Old French rissole or roissole, ultimately from a Latin root meaning reddish — the browned crust being the defining feature. In classic French practice a rissole is minced filling enclosed in pastry and deep-fried; the version here swaps a savoury pancake for the pastry, which is quicker and cheaper. Victorian household cookbooks devoted a great deal of space to what to do with cold joints, since a large roast was economical to buy and a family could not be asked to eat it cold three days running. Making the batter savoury by replacing the sugar and nutmeg with pepper and salt is the kind of instruction that tells you the plain sweet pancake was assumed knowledge.