No. 953

Rissoles of Mushroom and Marrow

Rissoles de Champignons a la Moelle

Cut half a pound of mushrooms into dice shaped pieces, and fry them on the fire with two ounces of butter, adding a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and a bay leaf, two ounces of sliced raw ham, and a teaspoonful of flour, also two spoonfuls of brown sauce (No. 414), a little broth, and some salt; let these all cook slowly, skim off the fat, and when done add the juice of a lemon, and set the preparation aside to get cold; finish them the same as explained a la Ude (No. 951).

For Marrow.—Cut in half inch slices and soak for three hours, changing the water several times; throw them into boiling broth, and when done, drain and coat over with some well reduced half-glaze (No. 400) with red pepper, and finish the same as the mushroom rissoles. Serve very hot on napkins.

← No. 952 Rissoles of Game, Chicken or Fish Forcemeat,Hot Side Dishes No. 954 Rissoles of Red Tongue or of Sweetbreads →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already knows what a rissole is: a cold, stiff filling sealed in pastry and deep-fried. The page here gives only the two fillings, so the assembly has to be read in from No. 951.

The hinge: the filling must be cold and stiffRissoles fail when the filling is loose, because it steams and bursts the pastry in the fryer. Cook the mushroom mixture down until it barely slumps on a spoon, then chill it thoroughly before it goes near dough.
What the cross-references meanNo. 414 is the book's brown sauce (an Espagnole-type sauce); a good demi-glace or a well-reduced brown stock stands in. No. 400 is half-glaze, a demi-glace reduced to coating consistency. "Finish them the same as explained a la Ude" sends the cook back to No. 951 for the assembly -- cold filling enclosed in pastry and fried in deep fat -- which this page does not repeat.
FryingThe book gives no temperature. Deep fat at 350-375F browns the pastry in two to three minutes without the interior boiling out.
"A bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and a bay leaf"A bouquet garni, tied so it can be pulled out before the mixture is chilled. It is a seasoning, not an ingredient of the filling.
SpoonfulsRanhofer's "spoonful" is generally a tablespoon unless he says teaspoon, as he does for the flour. Two spoonfuls of brown sauce is roughly two tablespoons, enough to bind rather than to sauce.
Raw hamTwo ounces of sliced raw ham means an uncooked cured ham of the prosciutto or jambon cru type, diced small and rendered with the mushrooms. Prosciutto or speck works; American breakfast ham is wet-cured and too mild and watery.
The marrow soak is not optionalThree hours in several changes of cold water draws the blood out of the marrow so it poaches white instead of grey. Marrow bones from a butcher usually need to be split or the marrow pushed out whole before slicing.
Red pepperCayenne, used sparingly. In this book "red pepper" almost never means paprika or a fresh capsicum.
Serving"On napkins" means a folded linen napkin on the platter to absorb frying fat and keep the rissoles from sliding.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that kitchen's repertoire, numbered and cross-referenced like a reference work rather than a book to be read straight through. Rissoles belong to the older French tradition of pastry-wrapped, deep-fried garnishes served as hors d'oeuvre chauds or, as here, hot side dishes between the heavier courses; the name is generally traced to Old French for something reddened or browned. The "a la Ude" reference points back to Louis Eustache Ude, the French chef who cooked in England and published The French Cook in 1813. Beef marrow, treated here as a delicacy worth three hours of soaking, was standard luxury cookery in this period and appears elsewhere in the book as a garnish, a filling and on toast.