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Rissoles
These are practically little turnovers, filled with a highly seasoned mixture of chopped chicken and ham or other delicate meat moistened with white sauce. Roll puff-paste very thin and cut in circles. Place a teaspoon of the mixture in the center of each circle, moisten half the circumference with cold water, and fold the other half over, pressing the edges closely together. Dip in slightly beaten egg mixed with a tablespoon of water. Fry in deep fat, and drain thoroughly.
A short entry that assumes you already know how to make white sauce and puff paste. The details it leaves out are the ones that decide whether the rissoles hold together in the fat.
- The hinge: a cold, stiff fillingThe chopped meat should be bound with a very thick white sauce — closer to a panada than a pouring sauce, roughly 2 tablespoons each butter and flour to a cup of milk or stock — and then chilled until firm. A loose filling steams inside the pastry, forces the seam open and empties into the fryer.
- SealingWater alone is a weak seal on puff paste, which is rich enough to resist it. Press the edges with a fork or crimp them, then chill the finished turnovers for 20 minutes before frying so the butter layers set.
- Fat temperatureThe book gives none. Deep fat at 370-375F browns the pastry in a few minutes; below about 350F puff paste soaks rather than puffs, and above 390F the outside colors before the center is hot.
- "Delicate meat"Period shorthand for cooked poultry, veal, sweetbreads, tongue or ham — the trimmings of yesterday's roast. Chop fine by hand rather than in a processor, or the filling turns to paste.
- Highly seasonedTake this literally. Cold chopped meat in white sauce is bland; seasonings common in period recipes of this kind include salt, plenty of pepper, a scrape of nutmeg or mace, lemon juice and sometimes a little onion or parsley. Season the filling while warm and taste it cold.
- The egg dipEgg alone, with no crumb, gives a thin glaze rather than a coating — it seals the seam more than it protects the pastry. If you want the sturdier version, egg and then fine dry breadcrumbs is the alternative the same era used for croquettes.
- Puff pasteAll-butter frozen puff pastry works; roll it to about 1/8 inch and cut 3-inch circles. Rough puff or trimmings are actually better here than a fully laminated block, since violent rise in the fat splits the seams.
- Yield and servingYield depends on how thin you roll and how large you cut; at the teaspoon of filling the recipe specifies, a cup of filling goes a long way, so scale the pastry to the filling rather than the reverse. Serve hot on a folded napkin, as the period liked, with the same sauce thinned down alongside.
Rissole comes into English from French, and is generally traced to a Vulgar Latin diminutive of russeus, reddish — the name is usually taken to describe the browned crust rather than the filling. By the period of this book the rissole had settled into the American household repertoire as a respectable way to use up cold roast, which is why it belongs among entrées and made-over dishes rather than among the roasts. In a period before reliable home refrigeration, a Monday dish built from Sunday's chicken and ham was a matter of economy, and cookbooks of the era devoted whole sections to dignifying leftovers with pastry, deep fat and a French name. The croquette, the timbale and the rissole all belong to that project.