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Rissoles Of Beef
Use either remnants of cold steak or roast beef. Trim off and discard all bits of gristle and leave very little, if any, of the fat meat. Chop very fine and with it chop a small slice of fat salt pork, or omit the pork and add later a tablespoonful of melted butter. To 1 pint of chopped meat add the same quantity of fine bread crumbs, moistened with milk or cream (if the pork is omitted, mix the butter with the crumbs). Season well with salt and pepper, a dash of cayenne, and 1/2 teaspoonful each of onion juice and kitchen bouquet. Add 1 beaten egg, mix well together, and if not moist enough add a little more milk or cream.
Make into balls as large as a small hen's egg, flouring the hands and rolling the balls in a very little flour. Fry in a frying-basket in deep hot fat; 1/2 lard and 1/2 clear beef drippings is best. When nicely browned, drain on a sheet of brown paper in a hot oven; pile them in the centre of a platter, and serve with a border of ripe, firm tomatoes, peeled and cut rather thick, with a spoonful of mayonnaise in the centre of each slice, or with slices of boiled beets. Alternate either tomatoes or beets with sprigs of parsley. Veal, lamb, or mutton may be used in the same way.
A leftover-meat dish built on equal volumes of chopped cooked beef and moistened bread crumbs, fried as balls rather than the flat pastry-wrapped rissole of French usage. The proportions matter more than the timing, since the meat is already cooked.
- The hinge: moisture, not more binderThe mixture should just hold a ball when squeezed and no more. If it cracks while rolling, add milk or cream a spoonful at a time; adding more crumbs or a second egg gives a dense, bready interior.
- A pint of chopped meatThis is a volume measure, roughly 2 cups packed, or about 12 oz of trimmed cooked beef. Matched with an equal 1 pint (2 cups) of fresh soft bread crumbs, it makes something over a quart of mixture; at the size specified -- a small hen's egg -- that is on the order of twenty balls.
- Kitchen bouquetA dark browning-and-seasoning liquid still sold under that name. Its job here is colour and a faint savoury depth; a scant half teaspoon of a mushroom-based browning sauce or of soy does the same work.
- Onion juiceNineteenth-century cooks grated an onion and used the expressed liquid to get onion flavour without visible pieces. Grating the cut face of an onion on a fine rasp and squeezing the pulp gives the half teaspoon called for.
- Frying fatHalf lard and half clear beef drippings was the usual household deep-frying fat, cheap to hand and tolerant of high heat. Any neutral oil at 365-375F works; the balls need 2 to 3 minutes, only long enough to brown and heat through, since the meat is cooked already.
- Draining in a hot ovenBrown paper stands in for paper towels. A rack set over a sheet pan in a 200F oven keeps the first batch crisp while the rest fry; the oven is for holding, not further cooking.
- Fat salt porkChopped in raw, it supplies the fat that cooked lean beef lacks. Salt pork or unsmoked fatback is the closest thing on a modern counter; the tablespoon of melted butter given as the alternative is a fair substitute, but season a little more assertively if you take it.
- ServingThe tomato-and-mayonnaise border is a cold garnish against hot fried meat and reads as a salad course combined with the main dish. Assemble it at the last moment or the platter weeps.
Rissoles in French cookery are usually a filling enclosed in pastry and fried, and the word traces back through Old French to a root meaning "reddened" or browned. American and English household books of the late nineteenth century steadily loosened the term until it meant almost any fried ball or cake of minced cooked meat, which is what this entry describes. It sits in a long tradition of made-over dishes: books of this period devoted whole chapters to the second appearance of a roast, since a large joint was economical to buy and cook but rarely finished in one sitting, and cold beef reheated plainly was thought poor eating. The closing line offering veal, lamb or mutton "in the same way" is the tell that this is a method rather than a dish, one that a cook was expected to apply to whatever the larder held.