No. 2979

Risot a la Francatelli

Chop up a two-ounce onion, fry it colorless in butter and add one pound of Piedmont rice, a few slices of raw smoked ham and six small chipolata sausages; moisten to double the height of the rice with broth (No. 194a), boil, put on the lid and place the saucepan in the oven for twenty minutes, then remove the ham and sausages, and incorporate four ounces of hazel-nut butter (No. 567), four ounces of grated parmesan and a very little salt and prepared red pepper (No. 168). Put two-thirds of this risot into a vegetable dish; garnish the top with a circle of escalops of sweetbreads fried in butter, and the center with the sausages, having suppressed the skin and cut them into slices: cover with the remainder of the risot. Serve separately a very thick rich sauce, into which mix some tomato paste and a little espagnole sauce (No. 414).

← No. 2978 Rice, Oriental Style Macaroni, Rice & Farinaceous No. 2980 Risot a la Ristori →

For the Modern Kitchen

A baked rice dish rather than a stirred risotto: the liquid goes in all at once and the pan finishes covered in the oven. Read the cross-references carefully, because one of them is not what it looks like.

"Hazel-nut butter" is browned butterRanhofer's No. 567 is beurre noisette — butter cooked until the milk solids turn hazelnut brown — not a nut paste. Four ounces is a full stick; brown it in a light pan so you can judge the colour, and take it off the heat while it is amber rather than dark.
Oven and vesselThe saucepan goes into the oven tightly lidded for twenty minutes. Ranhofer gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F, is the usual modern reading. Use a heavy ovenproof pot; "saucepan" here means a stovetop pan taken to the oven, and a thin one will scorch the bottom layer of rice.
Piedmont riceAny short-grain Italian risotto rice — Arborio, Carnaroli, Vialone Nano. Do not substitute long-grain; the dish depends on the starch that binds it when the cheese and butter go in.
Liquid ratio"Moisten to double the height of the rice" means the broth stands at twice the depth of the rice in the pan; allowing for the space the grains themselves occupy, that is somewhere around one and a half volumes of broth to one of rice. Add it hot so the oven time holds.
Prepared red pepperNo. 168 is a cayenne-based seasoning. A generous pinch of cayenne is the equivalent; the dish is already salty from ham, sausage and parmesan, so the "very little salt" is deliberate.
SweetbreadsVeal sweetbreads need soaking in several changes of cold water for a few hours, then blanching and peeling of the outer membrane before they are sliced into escalops and fried. Ranhofer assumes his reader has done this elsewhere in the book. Order them from a butcher; supermarkets rarely stock them.
Chipolata sausagesSmall fresh pork sausages, poached in the rice rather than browned. They are lifted out, skinned and sliced for the centre garnish, so choose thin ones with a natural casing that peels.
The sauceEspagnole is a brown veal stock sauce; a good reduced demi-glace or dark veal jus with tomato paste stirred in gives the same effect. Serve it separately as written — poured over, it muddies the rice.
YieldOne pound of rice with these garnishes serves six to eight as a course. The rice will firm up considerably as it cools, so assemble and serve promptly.

A Little History

The name honours Charles Elmased chchef of Italian descent who trained under Caror Queen Victoria, and whose books were standard reading for English-speaking professionals through the second half of the nineteenth century; Charles Ranhofer, running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, appears to be nodding to a senior colleague in the trade rather than reproducing a dish that can be securely attributed to him. The construction is telling: the rice is moistened all at once and finished covered in the oven, in the manner of a pilaf, and the creaminess comes from browned butter and parmesan beaten in at the end rather than from long stirring. Stirred risotto was already well established in Italy by this date, but it was not yet the default in the grand hotel kitchens of the 1890s, where "risot" could simply mean rice cooked in broth and enriched, and it functioned as a vehicle for expensive garnishes oatatas, the sort of trim that signalled the dish belonged to a full-service dinner rather than a family table.