Fricatelli
Chop raw fresh pork very fine, add a little salt, plenty of pepper, and two small onions chopped fine, half as much bread as there is meat, soaked until soft, two eggs; mix well together, make into oblong patties, and fry like oysters. These are nice for breakfast; if used for supper, serve with sliced lemon. - Mrs. W. F. Wilcox.
A plain pork patty bound with a bread panade — closer to German Frikadellen than to a sausage. The only real puzzles are the proportions and the phrase "fry like oysters."
- Working proportionsNothing is quantified, so scale from the meat: 1 lb ground pork, about 8 oz of stale bread (weighed dry, then soaked and squeezed nearly dry), 2 eggs, 2 small onions, 1 tsp salt and a generous 1/2 tsp black pepper. That much bread makes a soft, light patty rather than a dense one; "half as much bread as there is meat" was probably measured by bulk in a period kitchen, which gives noticeably less bread than half by weight.
- Soaked in whatThe recipe says only "soaked until soft." Comparable period recipes call for either milk or water; milk gives the more tender result, water the cheaper one. Either way, squeeze the bread out well or the mixture will not hold a shape.
- "Fry like oysters"In books of this period fried oysters are dipped in beaten egg, rolled in cracker or bread crumbs, and fried in a shallow depth of hot fat until browned on both sides. That is most likely what is meant here, and a crumb coat would help keep the soft mixture together in the pan.
- Chopped, not groundHand-chopped pork was standard when this was written. Coarse-ground pork shoulder is the closest match; avoid very lean ground pork, which turns dry with this much bread in it.
- Cook it throughGround pork needs 160F at the centre. Keep the patties no more than about half an inch thick and the fat at a steady medium-high — 6 to 8 minutes total, turning once — so the crumb coat and the interior finish together.
- YieldA pound of pork made up this way gives about ten oblong patties, enough for four at breakfast.
- The lemonThe recipe offers sliced lemon only for supper and gives no reason; acid would plausibly offset fat on a plate that has stood, which may be why it is omitted for breakfast, when the patties come hot from the pan.
"Fricatelli" is one of the many spellings American cookbooks gave to the fried meat cake that European kitchens knew as Frikadellen in Germany, frikadeller in Denmark, and frikandel in the Low Countries. The etymology is disputed — a family of names variously traced to French fricandeau, a piece of larded veal, and to Italian frittatella, with no settled answer. The Italian-looking ending here may therefore be no accident, and the technique itself is at least broadly northern European; the giveaway is the soaked-bread panade, which stretches meat and lightens texture at the same time. The Dixie Cook Book was assembled by Estelle Woods Wilcox from contributed receipts, each signed by its donor, and this one carries the compiler's own surname. The suggestion that the same dish serves for breakfast plain and for supper with lemon reflects a household economy in which one preparation was expected to reappear at a second meal in slightly altered dress.