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Veal Rissoles
Take about three-quarters of a pound of cold roast veal, free from skin, gristle, and fat, and a quarter of a pound of ham or bacon. Cut the meat into slices, then mince very finely. Mix with the meat half a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, the eighth part of a nutmeg, grated, a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley, and three table-spoonfuls of grated bread-crumbs. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and bind them together with the yolk of an egg beaten up with a little cream, milk, or strong, unsalted gravy. Form the paste into balls the size of a small walnut. Flour the balls, then dip them into beaten egg and bread-crumbs; let them stand an hour, then dip them in again. Fry them in plenty of hot fat till they are lightly browned all over. Drain them, serve on a hot dish with good gravy poured round but not upon them, and place fried rashers of bacon round them. Garnish with sliced lemon and parsley. Time to fry the rissoles, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the cold meat. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian way of turning the end of a roast into a second dinner. Most of it translates directly; the frying time is the one figure to ignore.
- Frying timeTen to fifteen minutes is far too long for balls the size of a small walnut made of already-cooked meat. At 350-375F they colour in three to four minutes and only need heating through; longer and the crumb burns while the filling dries out.
- Fat temperature"Plenty of hot fat" means deep enough for the rissoles to float, at 350-375F. Fry in batches so the temperature does not crash — the double crumb coating soaks up oil badly in a cool pan.
- The double crumbingEgg-and-crumb, rest an hour, then egg-and-crumb again is the hinge of the recipe. The rest lets the first coat set so the second grips; skip it and the shell is likelier to split and leak in the fat. The book says only to let them stand, but an hour in the refrigerator will also firm the balls for handling.
- Spoon measuresA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons.
- PepperHalf a teaspoon of pepper to a pound of meat reads high to modern palates, particularly with ham already in the mix. Start with half that and taste a fried teaspoonful of the raw mixture before shaping.
- The meatCold roast veal is uncommon now; cold roast pork, turkey or chicken behave the same way. Mince by hand or pulse briefly in a food processor — over-processing gives a paste that fries into a dense pellet.
- NutmegAn eighth of a whole nutmeg is roughly a quarter teaspoon freshly grated. Pre-ground nutmeg has usually lost most of its aromatics; grate it yourself.
- The gravyPoured round, not over, and for good reason: sauce on top turns the crisp coating to sludge within a minute. Serve the gravy in a jug if the dish sits on the table.
- YieldAbout 20 to 25 walnut-sized rissoles, serving three or four as the book says, with a vegetable alongside.
Rissoles came into English cookery from the French rissole, a fried pastry or forcemeat parcel whose name is generally traced to the Old French for something reddened or browned by cooking. By the late nineteenth century the word had loosened in British kitchens to mean almost any seasoned mince, bound and crumbed and fried, and it became one of the standard answers to the perennial question of what to do with Monday's cold joint. It is in effect a method rather than a dish: the veal here is interchangeable, the ham supplies salt and fat that roast meat has lost, the crumbs and egg yolk hold it together, and the double coating protects it in the fat. The costing — sixpence, "exclusive of the cold meat" — tells you the intended reader kept a close account and regarded leftovers as an asset already paid for.