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Rissolettes à la Solférino (Rissoles of Foie Gras)
(Rissoles of Foie Gras in Pancake Batter.) Ingredients.
Half a pint of Pancake Batter. Seasoning.
One ounce of Butter.
Four ounces of Foie-gras (potted with Truffles).
Four Mushrooms (preserved).
Two ounces of cooked Sweetbread.
One gill of Velouté or Béchamel Sauce.
The page gives quantities only — the method was assumed known to anyone working from a book of this class. What follows fills in the units, the vanished ingredients and the working sequence a rissolette needs.
- The hinge: the filling must be cold and firmFoie gras, chopped mushroom and diced sweetbread are bound with velouté reduced until it coats heavily, then spread on a tray and chilled until solid. A soft filling bursts the batter in the fat and the whole thing empties into the fryer.
- Half a pint of batterAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 10 fl oz — about 1¼ US cups of thin pancake batter.
- A gill5 Imperial fl oz, a scant ⅔ US cup. Reduce it hard before binding; the sauce is glue here, not sauce.
- "Foie-gras (potted with truffles)"A commercial pâté de foie gras truffé in a terrine or tin, not raw liver. A modern bloc de foie gras truffé is the nearest readily available substitute; four ounces is about 115 g.
- Cooked sweetbreadVeal thymus (or pancreas), ordered in advance from a butcher. It is soaked in several changes of cold water, blanched, pressed under a weight and trimmed of membrane before it is cooked and diced — none of which the ingredient list mentions.
- "Preserved" mushroomsBottled or tinned button mushrooms of the period. Drain and chop them fine; fresh mushrooms sweated dry in the ounce of butter work as well and taste better.
- FryingDeep fat at 350–375F. Rissolettes are small and already cooked through, so they need only two to three minutes to colour; longer and the foie gras melts out.
- Yield and serviceAbout eight to ten pieces, serving four as a hot entrée. Drain on paper, salt lightly and send them out at once with a little of the same sauce or a clear gravy.
Solférino, as a kitchen name, comes from the Franco-Sardinian victory over Austria in June 1859, one of a run of battles that gave the period a fashion for naming garnishes after recent campaigns — Magenta, fought the same month, gave its name to a dye colour and "solferino" to a related shade of purplish red. Escoffier-era usage generally attaches Solférino to tomato and to red garnishes, though a name of this kind in a late-Victorian British book is often decorative rather than descriptive.