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Rice and Nut Rissoles
2 ounces rice 3 ounces ground almonds 2 ounces pine kernels 3/4 pint milk White of one egg Little pepper and salt Put the rice and milk into a double saucepan; cook them for two hours, or until the milk is absorbed; then add the almonds, pine kernels and pepper; stir it round a few times until well mixed; then add the well-beaten white of egg. Mix again, and form into rissoles; roll in fine bread crumbs, and fry in boiling oil. The rissoles may be formed by hand or cut out into half circles with a biscuit cutter. Drain on paper before serving.
A simple nut-and-rice croquette that depends entirely on the rice being cooked to a sticky paste. The measurements are imperial and the method assumes a double boiler.
- The hinge: cook the rice to a pasteThe two hours in milk are not a misprint. The rice must break down until the mixture is thick and gluey, because the starch is doing nearly all the binding work; a single beaten egg white is not enough to hold loose grains together. Short-grain or pudding rice behaves better here than long-grain.
- Imperial measuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, about 1 3/4 US cups. Two ounces of rice is roughly 1/3 cup, three ounces of ground almonds a scant cup loosely packed, two ounces of pine kernels about 1/2 cup.
- Double saucepanA double boiler, or a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water. Milk and rice scorch readily over direct heat, which is why the original insists on it. A heavy pan on the lowest burner setting works if you stir often.
- SaltSalt is listed in the ingredients and then quietly dropped from the method. Add it with the pepper. Nut mixtures taste flat without a firm hand on the seasoning.
- Chill before shapingThe recipe says to form the rissoles straight away. A warm mixture is difficult to handle and tends to burst in the fat. Spread it out, cool it thoroughly, then shape and crumb.
- Frying"Boiling oil" means deep fat at roughly 350-375F. Below that the crumbs soak; much above and the almonds catch before the centre is hot. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Pine kernelsLeave them whole for texture, but toast them lightly first. Untoasted pine nuts are bland and slightly resinous, and nothing in this recipe develops their flavour otherwise.
- YieldAbout eight small rissoles, enough for two as a main course with a sauce and a vegetable, or four as a first course. A tomato sauce would suit.
Rissole comes through French, the older French word denoting a small fried pastry and deriving ultimately from a Latin root meaning reddish or browned; by the nineteenth century it covered almost any small crumbed and deep-fried shape, often made of minced leftover meat. Vegetarian cookery writers took the form over, substituting nuts and pulses for the mince, and the nut rissole was among the characteristic dishes of British meatless cooking in the decades either side of the First World War, when ground almonds, pine kernels and proprietary nut meats were sold to this market. If the recipe sits in a chapter organised around whites of eggs, that says as much about household economy as about vegetarianism: chapters built around a single leftover ingredient gave a cook left with whites after using the yolks somewhere to put them.