No. 956

Rissolettes a la Pompadour

Rissolettes are made with very thin pancakes, cutting them into round pieces two and a half inches in diameter; the salpicon ball to be an inch; they are fastened together by a string of chicken forcemeat (No. 89), a quarter of an inch thick, and laid on one-half of the circles. The paste for the pancakes is composed of half a pound of flour, stirring gradually into it, five eggs, a little milk, salt and two ounces of melted butter; the paste must be liquid. Put some clarified butter into small frying pans, add a little of the paste and spread it around so as to form very thin pancakes; when done lay them on a cloth, and cut from them with a round two and a half inch in diameter pastry cutter, pieces for the rissolettes.

Rissolettes a la Pompadour.—Have a small Julienne salpicon of beef palate and mushrooms mixed with a little well-reduced and well-seasoned bechamel (No. 409), set into a vessel to get cold. Make a ball of this preparation one inch in diameter, and lay it on the center of one of the pancake rounds, two and a half inches wide; fold the pancake and fasten the two edges together with a string of chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89); dip them in eggs and bread-crumbs and fry them to a fine color. Serve on folded napkins.

← No. 955 Rissoles of Partridge a la Waddington Hot Side Dishes No. 957 Rissolettes a la Renan →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you can turn out paper-thin crêpes and have a bowl of chicken quenelle forcemeat standing by. The hinge is the filling: the bechamel-bound salpicon must be cold and stiff enough to roll into a firm ball, or the parcels burst in the fat.

The batterHalf a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups; with five eggs, two ounces (4 tablespoons) melted butter and milk it should pour like thin cream. Let it rest 30 minutes and strain out lumps — thin pancakes tear if the batter is grainy.
Beef palateThe roof of an ox's mouth, sold blanched and simmered for hours until gelatinous. No supermarket carries it; a good butcher may order it, or substitute cooked veal sweetbread, braised tongue or simply more mushroom with a little cooked chicken. The point is a firm, faintly gelatinous dice, not a strong flavour.
SalpiconA salpicon is small even dice, here cut julienne-fine. Bind with only enough thick bechamel to hold it — a reduced sauce that sets solid when chilled. Refrigerate at least two hours before rolling the one-inch balls.
Forcemeat as glueThe "string" of chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) piped a quarter-inch thick around the half-circle is both seal and seasoning; it sets on frying and welds the edges. A stiff mousseline of raw chicken breast, egg white and cream does the same job. Press the folded edge firmly and chill the assembled rissolettes before breading.
Breading and fryingEgg and crumb, then chill again. Deep-fry at 350-360F for about three minutes — hot enough to colour the crumbs before the crêpe softens, not so hot that the centre stays cold. Drain well.
YieldThe batter makes far more crepe rounds than the filling requires; Ranhofer gives no quantity for the salpicon, so the number of rissolettes cannot be worked out from the recipe as written.
Serving"On folded napkins" is the period presentation for anything deep-fried: a linen napkin on the platter absorbs grease and keeps the pieces from sliding. A paper-lined dish does the same and needs no explanation to guests.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and it shows the house style exactly: a dish built by cross-reference, sending the cook to No. 89 for forcemeat and No. 409 for bechamel rather than repeating either. A rissolette is the small, delicate cousin of the rissole, a fried turnover normally made in pastry; substituting a thin pancake for the paste gives a lighter, crisper shell. Naming a dish a la Pompadour after Louis XV's mistress was a nineteenth-century restaurant convention rather than a claim of eighteenth-century origin — like a la Dubarry or a la Maintenon, it signalled refinement and small, pretty portions. The beef palate is the real period marker: a cheap offcut that long slow cooking turns silky, it appears throughout French service of the era and has all but vanished from English-speaking kitchens.