Home › Meat Substitutes › Rissoles
Rissoles
2 ounces bread raspings 2 ounces grated cheese 4 ounces mashed potato Oil 4 ounces onion 1 saltspoon pepper and salt 1 heaping tablespoon chopped parsley Put the bread crumbs, cheese, potatoes, parsley, pepper and salt into a bowl large enough to mix them thoroughly. Peel and slice the onion, and throw it into cold water; let it boil up quickly, and remain boiling for one minute then drain it, and chop it finely, adding it to the other ingredients in the bowl. Mix all thoroughly, and moisten with the milk. Mix again very carefully, cover the mixture, and let it stand for at least four hours. Now form it into any shape preferred, and fry in salad oil or butter. Prepare the bread raspings according to recipe given. The rissoles are equally good either hot or cold; but it must be remembered that they are intended as a relish to plainer food. They are very nourishing, being weight for weight of rather more value than beef or mutton.
A simple bound-crumb patty that depends almost entirely on the long resting time and on properly dried raspings. Two things in the original need sorting out before you start: the milk and the raspings themselves.
- The missing milkMilk appears in the method but not in the ingredient list, and no quantity is given. Add it a tablespoon at a time until the mixture just coheres when squeezed — around 3 to 4 tablespoons for this quantity. Too much and the rissoles will slump in the pan.
- Bread raspingsNot fresh breadcrumbs. Raspings are crusts and stale bread dried out hard, then crushed and sieved to a fine sandy meal; the book refers you to its own recipe for them. They absorb liquid more slowly than fresh crumbs, which may be part of the point of the long rest; fresh crumbs will tend to give a wetter, pastier mix.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The recipe means a quarter teaspoon of pepper and salt combined, which is modest — taste and adjust before the mixture goes to rest.
- The onionSliced onion dropped into cold water, brought to the boil and held one minute is a blanch, meant to take the raw bite out. Drain it very well and press out the water, or you will have to compensate by holding back the milk.
- Four hours is not optionalThe recipe insists on at least four hours, covered. The rest presumably lets the raspings swell and take up the milk, so don't cut it short. Refrigerate the covered bowl rather than leaving it at room temperature, and shape them cold.
- Salad oilPeriod shorthand for a mild table oil, usually olive. Any neutral oil works. Shallow-fry over medium heat — a hot pan will colour the cheese-and-crumb surface before the inside heats through.
- Binding, if neededWithout egg these are fragile. Rolling the shaped rissoles in a little extra rasping meal before frying gives a crust that holds them together and browns well.
- YieldRoughly six to eight small rissoles, enough for two as a light main course or four as the "relish to plainer food" the author intends.
- The nutrition claimThe assertion that these are worth more than beef or mutton weight for weight reflects the protein arithmetic of the period, not current nutritional science. Treat it as period rhetoric.
Rissole comes from Old French, ultimately from a word for something reddened or browned, and for centuries it meant a small fried parcel of minced meat, usually wrapped in pastry. At some point English cookery seems to have loosened the term to cover almost any bound, shaped, fried mixture, which made it a natural vehicle for vegetarian and economy cooking: the shape and the frying carried the familiar meaning while the filling changed entirely. Books of meatless cookery are often said to lean heavily on cheese, potato and breadcrumbs precisely because they hit the savoury, substantial register that diners expected from a meat course, and their authors are frequently described as keen to argue the nutritional case as well, a talking point traditionally associated with vegetarian advocacy. The instruction to save and dry bread crusts into raspings belongs to the same frugal household tradition, where nothing bakery-related was thrown away.