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Walnut Balls
4 ounces walnuts 4 ounces bread crumbs Whites of 3 eggs 1/2 pint sauce 2 teaspoons mixed herbs Proceed in exactly the same way as for Walnut Cutlets, forming into balls instead of flat.
A cross-reference recipe: the ingredients are here, the method sits under Walnut Cutlets a page or two earlier. What it amounts to is a bound nut forcemeat, shaped and fried.
- The hinge: the mixture must be stiff and coldThe hinge: the mixture must be stiff enough to hold a shape before it goes near fat. Chilling firms it; if it still slumps, work in more crumbs rather than more sauce.
- "1/2 pint sauce"Presumably the sauce called for in the cutlet recipe, and a thick one rather than a pouring sauce, given the quantity. If the book is British the pint is 20 fl oz, so half is 1 1/4 US cups; an American printing would mean 1 cup. Either way, add it gradually and stop when the mass coheres.
- Weights, not volumes4 oz walnuts is roughly a cup of nuts, ground or very finely chopped. 4 oz breadcrumbs is about 2 cups of fresh soft crumbs or a scant cup of dried ones, and the two behave quite differently in absorbing the sauce.
- Mixed herbsTypically some combination of dried thyme, marjoram, sage and parsley, sometimes with savory. Two teaspoons of dried herbs is assertive, which suits a mild nut base.
- FryingIf the cutlet method is the usual egg-and-crumb and fry, then for balls deep fry at 350-375F for three to four minutes until deep gold, or shallow fry and turn. Nothing here is raw meat, so colour is a fair guide once they are hot through.
- Toast and taste the nuts firstWalnut oil turns rancid quickly and a stale nut will ruin the whole batch. Taste before you grind, and a few minutes in a 350F oven sharpens the flavour.
- YieldMakes about twelve to sixteen walnut-sized balls, enough for four as a main course with gravy and potatoes, or eight as a savoury.
- The leftover yolksThree yolks will keep a day or two covered in the refrigerator and go into custard, mayonnaise or a sauce.
Nut cutlets and nut balls were the backbone of vegetarian cookery in Britain and America from the late nineteenth century onward -- ground walnuts or hazelnuts bound with breadcrumbs and sauce, shaped like a chop, crumbed and fried so that the plate looked conventional even when the meat was absent. Meatless cookery books appeared during the First World War, when meatless days were a matter of public food conservation rather than principle, and they borrowed freely from the older vegetarian and food-reform presses. The chapter heading here, "Whites of Eggs," points to a different pressure: household economy is often said to have encouraged the answering of a recipe using yolks with one using whites, and whole sections of period cookbooks are organised around that arithmetic rather than around any culinary logic.