No. 955

Rissoles of Partridge a la Waddington

Rissoles de Perdreaux a la Waddington

Chop up very fine one pound of raw partridge meat free of nerves, with five ounces of blanched fat pork, and five ounces of beef marrow; season with salt, pepper and nutmeg, then add two ounces of chopped up truffles, one whole egg, and a tablespoonful of half-glaze (No. 400); make rissole balls with this preparation the same way as explained for No. 947; dress them when finished in pyramids on a napkin, garnishing with a bunch of fried parsley.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have read No. 947 and No. 400 first; without them this reads as a forcemeat with no cooking method at all. The rissoles are shaped balls of raw game farce that are breaded (or wrapped in thin pastry) and deep fried, so everything below hangs on getting them cooked through without drying the lean bird meat.

The hinge: the forcemeat must stay coldA pound of lean game bound with 10 oz of pork fat and marrow will break and weep grease if it warms while you work it. Chill the meat, fat and bowl hard, chop or pulse in short bursts, and refrigerate the shaped balls until firm before frying.
Half-glazeNo. 400 is demi-glace, a brown sauce reduced to a syrupy, coating consistency. A tablespoon of good reduced veal or game stock, thick enough to set to a jelly when cold, does the same job here as seasoning and binder.
PartridgeOne pound of boneless raw breast and leg meat is roughly three to four partridges. Boneless skinless chicken thigh with a little duck or squab breast approximates the texture; plain chicken breast alone is too bland and too dry for this proportion of fat.
Blanched fat porkFresh unsmoked back fat or fatback, dropped in boiling water a few minutes and cooled, not salt pork or bacon. If you use salt pork instead, soak it and cut the added salt back sharply.
Beef marrowAsk a butcher for split marrow bones; five ounces takes two or three good leg bones. Soak in cold water, push the marrow out, and dice it cold. Marrow is very soft and melts readily, which is another reason to keep the mixture chilled.
TrufflesTwo ounces of fresh black truffle is a luxury item today. Preserved truffle peelings plus a few drops of their juice is the honest substitute; truffle oil will read as perfume against the game.
Frying and donenessFry at 350-360F until deep gold, about four to five minutes for walnut-sized balls, and take one to 165F on an instant-read thermometer. Raw poultry forcemeat needs to be fully cooked; a pink centre here is not rare game but undercooked ground bird.
Season by testNothing in the mixture is tasted raw. Poach or fry a teaspoon of it, taste, and correct the salt, pepper and nutmeg before shaping the rest.
Fried parsley and yieldCurly parsley must be bone dry before it goes into the fat; it spits, then crisps in about ten seconds and should stay green. The recipe makes roughly 1 3/4 lb of farce, about two dozen small rissoles, serving six to eight as a hot side dish.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house method in miniature: a classical French forcemeat, an internal cross-reference instead of a full method, and a dish named for a diner. Names like "a la Waddington" were currency in that world, honouring patrons, ambassadors and celebrated guests; this one is often linked to the Anglo-French statesman William Henry Waddington, but Ranhofer gives no explanation and the attribution should be treated as traditional rather than documented. What is certain is the period taste it represents. Rissoles, whose name goes back through Old French to a Latin word for reddish-brown, were a way of turning small quantities of expensive meat into a hot side dish for a long menu, and the combination of wild partridge, marrow and truffle marks it as a cold-weather course from an era when American markets still sold wild birds in quantity. The pyramids on a folded napkin with fried parsley are classical dining-room presentation, meant to be carried in and looked at before being eaten.