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Rissoles de Volaille
Prepare some mixture as for Tartelettes of Chicken, page 90, make half a pound of puff pastry and roll out very thin; stamp out a round about the size of a teacup, and put a small piece of the mixture in the centre, brush over the edge, then fold over after well egging the edges. Egg and bread-crumb, and fry in hot fat and serve with fried parsley.
A late-Victorian fried turnover: a thick, cold chicken salpicon sealed in thin puff pastry, crumbed and deep-fried. Almost everything depends on the filling being cold and stiff before it goes near the pastry.
- The hinge: a cold, stiff fillingThe cross-referenced chicken mixture would almost certainly be a salpicon of the usual kind: diced cooked chicken bound in a very thick white sauce and seasoned. If it is warm or loose it will steam the pastry open in the fat. Chill it until you can cut it into cubes and handle it.
- Half a pound of puff pastryAbout 225 g. Rolled "very thin" means roughly 2 mm; thick puff will not cook through before the crumb coating darkens.
- "The size of a teacup"A Victorian teacup rim is roughly 3 inches (7.5 cm), which gives a small rissole. Half a pound of pastry rolled thin should yield something under a couple of dozen, enough for four to six as an entrée.
- SealingThe original egg-washes the edge, folds, then eggs and crumbs the whole. Press the fold with a fork or thumb and check for gaps: a leaking rissole spits and empties itself into the fat.
- Chill before fryingNot stated in the recipe. Twenty minutes in the refrigerator after crumbing firms the butter in the pastry and helps the coating stay put.
- "Hot fat" means about 350–360F"Hot fat" -- The book gives no temperature. In practice use about 350-360F / 175-180C, deep enough to float them. Hotter and the crumbs burn while the pastry inside is raw; cooler and the pastry drinks fat. Three to four minutes, turning once, until deep gold.
- Fried parsleyVery dry curly parsley sprigs dropped into the same fat for 15 to 30 seconds, until they stop hissing and go crisp and dark green. Wet parsley makes the fat erupt; dry it thoroughly and stand back.
- ServingServe immediately, piled on a folded napkin or paper, with the parsley over and around. A little thickened gravy or tomato sauce passed separately keeps the crust crisp, though the recipe calls for nothing but the parsley.
Rissole comes through Old French from a Latin root meaning reddish, and the name is usually taken to describe the colour of the crust rather than the contents; de volaille simply means "of poultry," the standard kitchen French for chicken or other fowl. Rissoles of this kind belong to the Anglo-French service of the later nineteenth century, when an entrée course was expected to include something small, hot and fried, and when a cold, thickly bound salpicon was useful in the larder: cooked fowl, diced and set firm in sauce, could be turned into tartlets, croquettes, patties or these turnovers with no further butchery. The instruction to see another page for the filling is characteristic of cookery books of the period, which assumed a cook working through a repertoire rather than a single dish.