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Good Rissoles
Mince any cold meat, adding to a pound of it one-half pound of fresh lean pork, a chopped shallot and parsley, salt, pepper, a little nutmeg, and bind with an egg, both yolk and white. Form into balls, and dip them in flour, then color them in some butter, and when they are nicely browned pour into the butter a little stock or meat-juice and water. Let them gently cook in it for ten minutes, and serve.
A frugal way to turn Sunday's leftover roast into a second dinner. The one thing to change is the cooking time: raw pork is bound through the mixture, and ten minutes of gentle simmering will not reliably bring the centre of a large ball to a safe temperature.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockThe fresh pork is raw when the balls go into the pan, so treat these as you would meatballs rather than reheated meat. Simmer until the centre reaches 160F/71C on an instant-read thermometer, which for balls of about 1.5 in usually means 15-20 minutes in the liquid, turning once.
- Proportions1 lb cooked meat to 1/2 lb fresh lean pork, one shallot, and one egg makes roughly 12-16 rissoles, enough for four. The pork is structural as much as flavouring: it supplies the fat and the binding that dry cooked meat has lost.
- "Mince" means grindIn a British-published book of this period mincing was usually done in a hand mincer rather than chopped with a knife, though the book does not say. A food processor pulsed in short bursts works, but stop while there is still texture; a paste makes heavy rissoles.
- "Color them in some butter"Brown them over medium heat in a wide, shallow pan until the flour crust sets and takes colour, about 4-5 minutes total. Butter alone will scorch at this stage, so keep the heat moderate or use half butter, half neutral oil.
- "Stock or meat-juice and water"Meat-juice here most likely means the strained pan drippings or roasting-tin jelly from the joint the cold meat came from. Failing that, use about 3/4 cup of stock and water, enough to come a third of the way up the balls rather than to cover them.
- Seasoning quantitiesNone are given. For this weight, start with 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, a scant 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg and 2 tbsp chopped parsley. Fry a teaspoon of the raw mixture and taste before shaping the rest.
- The sauceWhen the rissoles come out, the floury crust will have thickened the pan liquid slightly. Reduce it a minute or two and spoon it over; no further thickening is intended.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes dictated by Belgian refugees who had come to Britain after the German invasion, and it reads throughout like household cooking recalled from memory rather than copied from a manuscript, which is why quantities and timings are so loose. Rissoles belong to the broad European family of leftover-meat dishes; the name comes through French from an older roissole, generally traced to a reconstructed Vulgar Latin *russeola, reddish, referring to the browned crust. The recipe's addition of fresh lean pork to cooked meat answers a practical need, since roast meat that has already given up its juices needs both fat and a binder to hold together at all. The shallot, parsley and nutmeg trio points to a regional habit: in the Low Countries nutmeg is often said to be used in savoury meat dishes far more freely than in British practice.