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Parmesan Puffs
Put four ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs, four ounces of grated Parmesan, two ounces of fresh butter, and a little salt and cayenne into a mortar, and pound them thoroughly. Bind the mixture together with a well-beaten egg, and make it up into balls, the size of a large walnut. Egg and bread-crumb these, and fry them until they are lightly browned. The fat must not be quite boiling when the puffs are put in, or they will be too highly coloured. Drain them, and serve very hot, piled on a napkin. Time, four or five minutes to fry the puffs. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward fried cheese ball with one real variable: the temperature of the fat. Everything else is a matter of translating weights and replacing the mortar.
- The hinge is fat temperatureCassell's warning that the fat "must not be quite boiling" points to moderate rather than fierce heat; in modern terms something in the region of 325-340F rather than the 375F you would use for chips. Hotter and the cheese-heavy crust darkens long before the centre has softened.
- Weights in cupsFour ounces of fine dry breadcrumbs is roughly 1 cup, plus more for coating; 4 oz grated Parmesan is about 1 1/3 cups loosely packed; 2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons. Weighing is more reliable here, since crumb and cheese volumes vary wildly with grating.
- Mortar or processorThe pounding is there to bind crumb, cheese and butter into a paste that will hold a ball. A food processor does it in seconds; work in short pulses so the butter does not melt and the mixture stays cool enough to shape.
- Butter temperature"Fresh butter" means unsalted. It needs to be genuinely soft to pound in. If the paste is too slack to roll after the egg goes in, chill it for twenty minutes rather than adding more crumb, which makes the puffs dry.
- Size and countA large walnut is about 1 inch across, or a rounded tablespoon of paste. The quantities give roughly 16 to 20 balls, which matches the original's five or six people served as a savoury course rather than a main dish.
- The double coating"Egg and bread-crumb these" means rolling each ball in beaten egg, then in dry crumbs, separately from the egg already worked into the paste. Budget a second egg for this. Let the coated balls sit ten minutes before frying so the crust sets.
- ServingThe napkin is a Victorian draining device as much as a presentation: a folded cloth on a hot dish absorbs surface fat. Paper towel on a warmed plate does the same work. They must go to the table immediately, as the interior firms up as it cools.
- CostTenpence is a period price, not a guide to anything now. Parmesan was the expensive element, which is why the crumb is doing half the work.
Parmesan puffs belong to the savoury, the small hot salted course that came after the sweet at a late-Victorian dinner and before the dessert fruit. Cassell's gives the recipe among the cheese fritters, ramekins and croutes suited to exactly that slot: intensely flavoured, served in a small quantity, and eaten with the last of the wine. The technique of extending a costly hard cheese with breadcrumbs and butter, then frying the result, was standard economy in English kitchens of the period, and it is the same logic that produces cheese straws and Welsh rarebit. Parmesan itself had long been imported into Britain and was valued for keeping well and grating dry, qualities that mattered in a household without refrigeration. The savoury course faded from ordinary dinners in the twentieth century, though it survives in Oxford and Cambridge college halls and in the English habit of ending a meal with cheese rather than beginning it.