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Rissables
Chop veal and ham finely together, add a few bread-crumbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a little parsley and lemon-peel or shallot. Mix these ingredients together with the yolks of two eggs well beaten. Roll the preparation into shape like a flat sausage, or into the shape of pears, sticking a bit of horse-radish in the ends to represent the stalks; egg over each, and grate bread-crumbs upon them. Fry to a brown colour, and serve on crisp fried parsley.
A Victorian leftovers dish given a decorative turn. No quantities are stated, which is normal for this kind of entry — the cook was expected to work from whatever cold meat was in the larder.
- Cooked meat, not rawCooked meat, most likely -- Rissoles of this type were usually made from cold roast veal and cooked ham, which would explain why the mixture is only fried to colour, though the recipe does not actually say so. If you start from raw veal, the interior must reach 165F/74C, and the frying time in the original will not get you there.
- Working proportionsAbout three parts veal to one part ham by weight, roughly 12 oz total, with 2 to 3 tablespoons of fine dry breadcrumbs and two egg yolks as binder. Add crumbs a spoonful at a time — too many and the result is dry and pasty.
- Seasoning scaleFor that quantity: a good pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, a scant 1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg, a tablespoon of chopped parsley, and either the finely grated zest of half a lemon or one small shallot chopped very fine. Lemon peel here means zest only, no pith.
- Chill before shapingHalf an hour in the refrigerator firms the paste and is the difference between neat pears and a mixture that slumps in the pan.
- The pear conceitThe horseradish "stalks" are decoration and are not meant to be eaten; a short peeled stub of fresh root pushed into the narrow end reads as a stem. A sprig of parsley stalk does the same job if fresh horseradish is not to hand.
- Egg and crumb properly"Egg over" means whole beaten egg, not yolk again. Crumb, rest a few minutes, then crumb a second time for a coat that will not split in the fat.
- Frying temperatureFry in oil or clarified butter deep enough to come halfway up the rissoles, at 350 to 360F. Hotter and the crumb darkens before the centre is hot through; the pear shapes need turning to brown evenly.
- Fried parsleyThe parsley must be bone dry before it goes in or the fat will spit hard. Drop dry sprigs into 350F fat for 10 to 15 seconds, until the colour sets bright and the leaves turn brittle, then lift onto paper. It goes bitter and black in under a minute.
- YieldThe quantities above give about eight flat sausages or six pears — a light lunch or supper for three, with the fried parsley as the only garnish the dish needs.
"Rissable" appears to be a nineteenth-century English rendering of rissole, which reaches English through Old French from a Latin root meaning reddish or browned — the same idea behind the verb rissoler, to brown in fat. The rissole was a method more than a set-piece recipe: the household way of turning cold roast meat into something that could be sent to table again without apology. The pear-shaped version, with its horseradish stalk, belongs to the Victorian taste for food dressed up as something else, the same impulse that produced mock turtle soup. Veal and ham were a common pairing for it, echoing the veal-and-ham pie of the same kitchens, and fried parsley was a common garnish of the period.