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Salmon Rissoles
Take the bones and skin from some cold cooked salmon, pound the fish in a mortar with a few bread-crumbs, a little pepper, and a few drops of essence of anchovies. With hands well-floured, make the rissoles into round balls. Fry in hot lard or butter until they are of a golden brown, and serve up on a dish-paper garnished with parsley.
A frugal use for leftover poached salmon, and one that gives no quantities at all. The proportions below are a working starting point rather than a reconstruction.
- ProportionsRoughly 1 lb (450 g) cooked flaked salmon to 2-3 oz (60-85 g) fresh breadcrumbs holds together well. Enough for 8-10 balls, serving 3 or 4 as a light dish.
- Essence of anchoviesA thin, salty commercial anchovy extract sold by the bottle in Victorian grocers. Anchovy paste from a tube, thinned with a little water, or half a mashed salted anchovy, does the same job. It is a seasoning, not a flavour in its own right: a few drops means a few drops.
- The mortarPounding was the usual way to reduce cooked fish to a smooth paste, often followed by passing it through a sieve. A food processor will do it in seconds, but pulse rather than run it, or the salmon turns to putty. Some cooks prefer to leave the fish flaked for texture.
- BindingThe recipe relies on the breadcrumbs alone. If the mixture will not hold a ball, add an egg yolk, then chill the shaped rissoles for 30 minutes before frying so they do not collapse in the fat.
- FryingThe recipe says only 'hot' fat. Somewhere around 350F (175C) suits. Butter alone can brown and catch before the crust sets; clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, is more forgiving. The fish is already cooked, so you are only after colour.
- Flouring the handsWell-floured hands are the whole trick with a soft mixture. Other versions roll the balls in flour, then egg and crumbs, which gives a firmer shell and less risk of splitting.
- Dish-paperA pierced or lace-cut paper doily laid on the serving dish to absorb frying fat. Kitchen paper under the rissoles, then a clean dish, achieves the same end.
- ServingHot, with lemon, and a plain butter or shrimp sauce if you want more than the parsley garnish.
Rissoles reach English cookery from the French rissole, a fried, usually enclosed pastry parcel, though by the nineteenth century the English word had loosened to mean almost any small ball or cake of chopped and bound meat or fish, fried. This one belongs among the great mass of leftover recipes that made up so much of a Victorian household manual: a whole poached salmon was a substantial expense, and what remained of it had to be turned into something that looked deliberate. Essence of anchovies, along with mushroom ketchup and Harvey's sauce, belonged to the small battery of bottled savoury seasonings kept for exactly this purpose, lifting cold cooked fish that had lost its first flavour. The dish-paper garnish suggests a house that still cared how a plate was presented, however humble its origins.