No. 1054

Oysters Rissolettes a la Pompadour

Rissolettes d'Huitres a la Pompadour

After blanching medium-sized oysters, drain and suppress the hard parts; prepare some round pieces of thin pancake, two and a half inches in diameter; fill half of each with a little thick Italian sauce (No. 484); lay an oyster on top with more sauce over, then force a quarter inch cord of fish quenelle forcemeat (No. 90) through a cornet on one half of the pancake; fold over and fasten the edges together; dip them in beaten eggs, then in bread-crumbs, and fry a fine color; then dress on a folded napkin and garnish with a bunch of fried parsley.

← No. 1053 Oysters a la Boucicault Oysters No. 1055 Osyters a la Rubino →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has sauce and forcemeat standing by; assembled from scratch this is a two-stage project. The hinge is the seal: a rissolette that opens in the fryer dumps its sauce and spatters.

Blanch brieflyOysters need only 20-30 seconds in their own liquor or lightly salted water, just until the edges ruffle. They will cook again inside the fritter, and anything longer turns them to rubber.
"Suppress the hard parts"This means cutting away the tough adductor muscle and any gritty frill, not discarding the oyster. Drain them well and blot dry, or the sauce will loosen inside the parcel.
The pancakesUnsweetened crepes, made thin and cooled flat, then cut with a 2 1/2-inch round cutter. Fresh crepes fold without cracking; day-old ones want a moment under a damp cloth.
Italian sauce (No. 484)Ranhofer's sauce italienne is broadly a duxelles of finely chopped mushrooms and shallot cooked down in oil, moistened with wine and half-glaze and finished with chopped parsley; consult No. 484 for his own proportions. Whatever the details, it must be reduced very thick, near paste consistency, or it will run when the pancake is folded.
Fish quenelle forcemeat (No. 90)A pounded white-fish forcemeat bound with panade and egg (Ranhofer's fish forcemeats vary as to butter or cream). Here it is mortar as much as filling: piped in a quarter-inch cord around the edge, it sets in the fryer and welds the two halves shut. A stiff mousseline of whiting, pike or cod in a food processor does the same job.
CornetA paper piping cone, rolled from parchment and snipped to a quarter-inch opening. A small plain piping tip is the modern equivalent.
FryingDeep fat at 350-360F, about two minutes to a light gold. Hotter than that and the crumb colors before the forcemeat sets; cooler and the pancake drinks oil. Fry three or four at a time to hold the temperature.
Fried parsleyCurly parsley must be bone dry before it meets the fat, which will still sputter hard for a few seconds. Ten to fifteen seconds is enough; it should stay green, not brown.
YieldFigure one oyster per rissolette and three to four per person as a first course. They are best straight from the fryer and do not hold well.

A Little History

Rissolette is the diminutive of rissole, the medieval French fried pastry parcel whose name is generally traced to the same root as roux, by way of Old French roussole, "reddish" for the color of the fried crust uction rather than a documented derivation. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full record of the restaurant's repertoire, and this dish sits in a substantial run of numbered oyster preparations, a fair measure of how central and how cheap oysters still were in late-nineteenth-century New York. The Pompadour name is one of the many honorific tags French kitchens attached to elaborate garnishes after Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV; such names were applied loosely and long after her death, and rarely indicate any documented connection to her table. What the recipe really shows is the Delmonico method: a raw material any New York oysterman could supply, dressed through four separate preparations, each cross-referenced to a number elsewhere in the book.