Home › The Principles of Cookery › ROULETTES (a Spanish recipe)
ROULETTES (a Spanish recipe)
Take one ounce of grated onion, and brown it in an ounce and a half of butter, together with two ounces of flour; thin the mixture with half a pint of good stock. Let all boil together till it is smooth, then stir in half a pound of any roasted or boiled meat, finely chopped; add three boned anchovies minced, pounded pepper, salt, a little mace, the juice of half a lemon, and a glassful of white wine. When the preparation is quite cold, cut it into the form of sausages; roll these in bread-crumbs, then in egg beaten up, then again in bread and egg, and last of all in bread-crumbs; fry in plenty of hot lard; garnish with fried parsley, and serve. The above ingredients are enough for about sixteen roulettes.
This is a croquette in all but name: a stiff, well-seasoned panade bound with cooked meat, chilled hard, breaded twice and deep-fried. Nearly everything depends on how firmly the mixture sets.
- The hinge: chill it properlyThe mixture must be spread in a shallow tray and refrigerated until genuinely firm, several hours or overnight. "Quite cold" in a Victorian larder meant cold and stiff; a mixture that is merely cool will burst its coating in the fat.
- Half a pint of stockCassell's is British, so this is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or about 1¼ US cups. With 2 oz of flour and 1½ oz of butter that gives a very thick roux-based panade, which is what you want.
- A glassful of wineA wineglass in period cookery books is reckoned at about 2 fl oz. Add it with the stock and let it cook out, or the mixture will be too loose to set.
- Boned anchoviesThese are salt-cured whole anchovies, filleted at home. Three boned fish amount to roughly six modern tinned fillets; they bring plenty of salt, so season at the end rather than the start.
- MaceThe lacy outer coat of nutmeg, warmer and less sweet. Ground mace is still sold; a scant quarter teaspoon is enough for this quantity. Nutmeg can stand in, used sparingly.
- The double breadingCrumb, egg, crumb, egg, crumb is deliberate and worth following exactly — the double jacket is what keeps a soft filling contained. Let the coated rolls rest in the fridge 30 minutes before frying.
- FryingLard is still ideal for flavour, but any neutral frying fat works. Hold the fat at 350-375°F and fry in small batches; the filling is already cooked, so you are only browning the crust, three to four minutes.
- Fried parsleyThe parsley must be bone dry before it meets the fat or it will spit violently. A few seconds in the oil is enough — it should stay green, not brown.
- YieldSixteen roulettes, which serves four as a main course with a salad, or eight as a first course.
Cassell's calls these Spanish, but the technique is squarely French: a thick béchamel or velouté panade used to bind chopped cooked meat, chilled, shaped and crumbed — the standard nineteenth-century croquette, and one of the great uses for the remains of a roast in a household that carved cold joints for days. Victorian cookery books attached national labels loosely, often meaning little more than that a version had been encountered abroad. The anchovy is the telling detail: British kitchens of the period are often said to have reached for anchovy, either as essence or as boned salt fish, to give savoury depth to reheated meat, the same instinct that a modern cook satisfies with fish sauce or Worcestershire. Recipes of this kind belong to the frugal end of a book that also runs to turtle and truffles, and they were how leftovers reached a dinner table without apology.