Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Macaroni, Rice, Polenta, And: Risotto
No. 190. Risotto all' Italiana Ingredients: Rice, an onion, butter, stock, tomatoes, cheese.
Fry a small onion slightly in butter, then add half a pint of very good stock. Boil four ounces of rice, but do not let it get pulpy, add it to the above with three medium-sized tomatoes in a purée. Mix it all up well, add more stock, and two tablespoonsful of grated Parmesan and Cheddar mixed, and serve hot.
No. 191. Risotto alla Genovese Ingredients: Rice, beef or veal, onions, parsley, butter, stock, Parmesan, sweetbread or sheep's brains.
Cut up a small onion and fry it slightly in butter with some chopped parsley, add to this a little veal, also chopped up, and a little suet. Cook for ten minutes and then add two ounces of rice to it. Mix all with a wooden spoon, and after a few minutes begin to add boiling stock gradually ; a stir with the spoon, so that the rice whilst cooking may absorb the stock; when it is half cooked add a few spoonsful of good gravy and sweetbread or sheep's brains (previously scalded and cut up in pieces), and, if you like, a little powdered saffron dissolved in a spoonful of stock and three tablespoonsful of grated Parmesan and Cheddar mixed. Stir well until the rice is quite cooked, but take care not to get it into a pulp.
No. 192. Risotto alla Spagnuola Ingredients: Rice, pork, ham, onions, tomatoes, butter, stock, vegetables, Parmesan.
Put a small bit of onion and an ounce of butter into a saucepan, add half a pound of tomatoes cut up and fry for a few minutes. Then put in some bits of loin of pork cut into dice and some bits of lean ham. After a time add four ounces of rice and good stock, and as soon as it begins to boil put on the cover and put the saucepan on a moderate fire. When the rice is half cooked add any sort of vegetable, by preference peas, asparagus cut up, beans, and cucumber cut up, cook for another quarter of an hour, and serve with grated Parmesan and Cheddar mixed and good gravy.
No. 193. Risotto alla Capuccina Ingredients: Risotto (No. 190) eggs, truffles, smoked tongue, butter. a Make a good risotto, and when cooked put it into a fire-proof dish. When cold cut into shapes with a dariole mould and fry for a few minutes in butter, then turn the darioles out, scoop out a little of each and fill it with eggs beaten up, cover each with a slice of truffle and garnish with a little chopped tongue. Put them in the oven for ten minutes.
No. 194. Risotto alla Parigina Ingredients: Risotto (No. 190), game, sauce, butter.
Make a good risotto, and when cooked pour it into a fire-proof dish, let it get cold, and then cut it out with a dariole mould, or else form it into little balls about the size of a pigeon's egg. Fry these in butter and serve with a rich game sauce poured over them.
No. 195. Ravioli Ingredients: Flour, eggs, butter, salt, forcemeat, Parmesan, gravy or stock.
Make a paste with a quarter pound of flour, the yolk of two eggs, a little salt and two ounces of butter. Knead this into a firm smooth paste and wrap it up in a damp cloth for half an hour, then roll it out as thin as possible, moisten it with a paste-brush dipped in water, and cut it into circular pieces about three inches in diameter. On each piece put about a teaspoonful of forcemeat of fowl, game, or fish mixed with a little grated Parmesan and the yolks of one or two eggs.
Fold the paste over the forcemeat and pinch the edges together, so as to give them the shape of little puffs; let them dry in the larder, then blanch by boiling them in stock for quarter of an hour and drain them in a napkin.
Butter a fire-proof dish, put in a layer of the ravioli, powder them over with grated Parmesan, then another layer of ravioli and more Parmesan.
Then add enough very good gravy to cover them, put the dish in the oven for about twenty-five minutes, and serve in the dish.
No. 196. Ravioli alla Fiorentina Ingredients: Beetroot, eggs, Parmesan, milk or cream, nutmeg, spices, salt, flour, gravy.
Wash a beetroot and boil it, and when it is sufficiently cooked throw it into cold water for a few minutes, then drain it, chop it up and add to it four eggs, one ounce of grated Parmesan, one ounce of grated Cheddar, two and a half ounces of boiled cream or milk, a small pinch of nutmeg and a little salt. Mix all well together into a smooth firm paste, then roll into balls about the size of a walnut, flour them over well, let them dry for half an hour, then drop them very carefully one by one into boiling stock and when they float on the top take them out with a perforated ladle, put them in a deep dish, dust them over with Parmesan and pour good meat or game gravy over them.
No. 197. Gnocchi alla Romana Ingredients: Semolina, butter, Parmesan, eggs, nutmeg, milk, cream.
Boil half a pint of milk in a saucepan, then add two ounces of butter, four ounces of semolina, two tablespoonsful of grated Parmesan, the yolks of three eggs, and a tiny pinch of nutmeg. Mix all well together, then let it cool, and spread out the paste so that it is about the thickness of a finger. Put a little butter and grated Parmesan and two tablespoonsful of cream in a fire-proof dish, cut out the semolina paste with a small dariole mould and put it in the dish.
Dust a little more Parmesan over it, put it in the oven for five minutes and serve in the dish.
No. 198. Gnocchi alla Lombarda Ingredients: Potatoes, flour, salt, Parmesan and Gruyère cheese, butter, milk, eggs.
Boil two or three big potatoes, and pass them through a hair sieve, mix in two tablespoonsful of flour, an egg beaten up, and enough milk to form a rather firm paste; stir until it is quite smooth. Roll it into the shape of a German sausage, cut it into rounds about threequarters of an inch thick, and put it into the larder to dry for about half an hour. Then drop the gnocchi one by one into boiling salted water and boil for ten minutes. Take them out with a slice, and put them in a well-buttered fire-proof dish, add butter between each layer, and strew plenty of grated Parmesan and Cheddar over them. Put them in the oven for ten minutes, brown the top with a salamander, and serve very hot.
No. 199. Frittata di Riso (Savoury Rice Pancake) Ingredients: Rice, milk, salt, butter, cinnamon, eggs, Parmesan.
Boil quarter of a pound of rice in milk until it is quite soft and pulpy, drain off the milk and add to the rice an ounce of butter, two tablespoonsful of grated Parmesan, and a pinch of cinnamon, and when it has got rather cold, the yolks of four eggs beaten up.
Mix all well together, and with this make a pancake with butter in a fryingpan.
A run of Italian rice and pasta dishes from an English book of 1901, written for cooks who already knew their way around a stockpot. One of them (No. 191) cannot be made today; the rest need mainly unit conversions and a firmer hand with timings.
- Why No. 191 is off the tableRisotto alla Genovese calls for scalded sheep's brains stirred into the rice. Ruminant brain and spinal cord are among the tissues that carry transmissible spongiform encephalopathies — BSE in cattle, scrapie in sheep — and the infectious agent is a prion that is not destroyed by scalding, boiling, or ordinary cooking. Skull and brain are classed as specified risk material and kept out of the food chain in the UK and EU (for sheep, in animals over twelve months). Skip the recipe; if you want a Genoese-style risotto, use a current recipe.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint here is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or about 1¼ US cups. Four ounces of rice is roughly ½ cup dry, which makes two modest portions — these are single-course quantities, not family dishes. Two and a half ounces of cream is about 5 tablespoons.
- The rice in No. 190Boiling the rice separately and then folding it into stock and tomato purée is not modern risotto technique and will not give you a creamy dish. No. 191 is closer to the familiar method: the rice goes into the fat with the onion and veal and boiling stock is added gradually. (No. 192 adds rice and stock together and covers the pan, which is nearer a pilaf.) Use carnaroli or arborio, and the book's warning against pulp is the hinge — pull it while the grain still has a core.
- Parmesan and CheddarThe pairing appears in five of these nine recipes and looks like an English substitution: the ingredient list for No. 198 still names Gruyère while the method says Cheddar. A dry aged pecorino or grana does the same job; if you use Cheddar, take an aged one and grate it fine so it does not string.
- Dariole moulds and the salamanderA dariole is a small tapered metal mould of 2 to 3 fl oz — a timbale or a large muffin cup will serve. A salamander was an iron plate heated in the fire and held over food to glaze it; use the broiler.
- "The larder" and "a moderate fire"Drying gnocchi or ravioli in the larder means half an hour uncovered in a cool, airy place, not the refrigerator. A moderate fire is medium heat, a gentle simmer under the lid. The book gives no oven temperatures at all; 350–375F works for the dishes that go into the oven, and the five minutes given for the gnocchi alla Romana will heat but not brown them — 15 to 20 minutes is closer to what the dish wants.
- Ravioli boiled a quarter of an hourFifteen minutes will destroy thin fresh pasta, and the ravioli then get another twenty-five minutes in the oven under gravy. The book does not say whether the forcemeat of fowl, game or fish is raw or cooked; cook the filling before it goes in and the pasta needs only three or four minutes.
- Ravioli alla FiorentinaDespite the name these are gnudi-style dumplings: boiled beetroot, eggs, cheese and cream, bound only by a dusting of flour. The mixture is fragile — poach one ball first, and if it breaks up, work in more grated cheese or a spoonful of flour before shaping the rest.
- Frittata di RisoYolks only, no whites, so this sets dense rather than fluffy. The pinch of cinnamon with Parmesan reads oddly now but is an old Italian habit; keep it small. Fry over gentle heat in a well-buttered pan and finish the top under the broiler rather than trying to flip it.
These recipes come from The Cook's Decameron (1901), generally attributed to Mrs W. G. Waters, who hung a collection of Italian dishes on a Boccaccio-style frame: a party of English guests shut up together for ten days, each day bringing a menu and a discussion of cookery. The conceit was a vehicle for a serious argument — that Italian cooking was economical, vegetable-forward and far better suited to the English household than the fashionable Franco-hotel repertoire of the day. That agenda shows in the details: the quantities are small and thrifty. Risotto alla Genovese with sweetbreads or brains reflects a period when offal was cheap, everyday food and no one had reason to think otherwise; the prion diseases that took brain off the menu were not identified until the second half of the twentieth century, and the British BSE epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is what put the ban in place.