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Irish Rissoles
Any kind of meat may be used for these, preferably rare roast beef or steak. Put the meat through the meat grinder together with enough chives to flavor it. (A little onion may be used if chives cannot be obtained.) Add soft breadcrumbs from inside of loaf, seasoning, and enough milk to shape the rissoles. Form into round balls and sauté in a very little hot fat, turning them often, that all sides may be brown. For five small rissoles use one cup of minced beef, a few chives, or half a small onion, nearly a cup of bread-crumbs, and a third of a cup of milk. They may be served plain or with white sauce, and are very quickly made.
A straightforward left-over meat ball, and the proportions given at the end are the usable part of the recipe. Two details decide whether they hold together and whether they taste of anything.
- The binderBread and milk alone hold these loosely; there is no egg. Let the soft crumbs sit in the milk for five minutes until they collapse into a paste before working in the meat, or the rissoles will crack apart in the pan.
- Soft crumbs, not dry"Soft breadcrumbs from inside of loaf" means fresh torn crumb, not the dry packaged kind, which absorbs far more liquid. If you use dry crumbs, cut them to about half a cup and expect to add more milk.
- The meat is already cookedRare roast beef ground fine will cook further while the outside browns. Sauté over medium heat for six to eight minutes total, turning as directed. Longer only dries them out.
- Season assertively"Seasoning" in a recipe of this kind ordinarily meant salt and pepper. Cold cooked beef is bland, so salt at a level you would find slightly aggressive raw; a spoonful of the pan gravy or a dash of Worcestershire is in keeping.
- Chives versus onionChives go in raw and stay mild. Raw onion in a ball this small can still be sharp and crunchy after eight minutes in the pan, so mince it very fine or soften it in the fat first.
- Fat and pan"A very little hot fat" means a shallow film in a heavy skillet, not deep frying. Cast iron or another heavy pan gives the browning the recipe is after; a thin nonstick pan will steam them grey.
- YieldThe stated proportions make five small rissoles, which is one modest serving or a light lunch for two with the white sauce. Scale up by whole cups of meat.
Rissole comes from the Old French roissole, ultimately from a Latin root meaning reddened — the name is a description of the browned crust rather than of any filling. By the nineteenth century English and American cookbooks used the word loosely for almost anything minced, bound and fried, from meat balls to pastry-wrapped turnovers. The "Irish" here is probably doing little historical work; in period cookbooks such labels often seem to have signalled nothing more than a plain, thrifty treatment without wine or elaborate sauce. What the recipe really documents is the economics of the pre-refrigeration household: a Sunday roast had to be eaten down over several days, and books devoted entirely to left-overs were a standard genre, offering a repertoire of grindings, hashes and croquettes to disguise the same joint on its third appearance.