No. 957

Rissolettes a la Renan

Prepare a chicken puree by pounding together half a pound of chicken and half a pound of rice cooked in white broth, adding half a pint of bechamel (No. 409), two ounces of fresh butter and some meat glaze (No. 402); season, press through a tammy, let get thoroughly cold, then finish making the rissolettes the same as for a la pompadour (No. 956).

← No. 956 Rissolettes a la Pompadour Hot Side Dishes No. 958 Rissolettes a la Solferino →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a filling recipe, not a finished dish: Ranhofer expects you to turn back to No. 956 for the shaping and frying. Read both before you start, and plan for the overnight chill.

The hinge: chill it hardThe puree must be thoroughly cold and firm before it can be shaped, egg-washed and fried. Spread it in a shallow tray and refrigerate several hours or overnight; a soft filling will burst its coating in the fat.
Half a pintIn Ranhofer's American measure that is one cup (8 fl oz) of bechamel. A gill, if you meet one elsewhere in the book, is half a cup.
White brothA pale, unroasted chicken or veal stock. Cook the rice in it until quite soft and let it absorb nearly all the liquid, so the puree is not slack.
Meat glazeNo. 402 is glace de viande: brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets solid when cold. A tablespoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate does the same job; add it cautiously, as it is salty and will darken the mixture.
Press through a tammyA tammy was a fine worsted cloth used to force sauces and purees smooth. A food processor followed by a drum sieve or fine-mesh strainer gives the same texture with far less work.
The chickenHalf a pound of chicken; Ranhofer does not specify whether it is skinned or whether the weight is taken before or after cooking. Poached breast or leftover roast will serve. Pound or process it with the rice, and season more assertively than seems right, since the mixture is served cool-set and fried.
FryingRanhofer gives no temperature or timing; the coating and frying belong to No. 956. Modern deep-frying practice would be around 350-360F until evenly gold, a few minutes. Everything inside is already cooked, so the aim is colour and a hot centre.
YieldThe ingredients come to something over a pound and a half of filling. Ranhofer gives no yield, and the number of rissolettes will depend entirely on the size you shape them.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, where a formal dinner ran to a whole series of entrees volantes and hot side dishes of exactly this kind: small, fried, made largely from yesterday's cooked meat, and dignified by a name. Rissole descends from Old French for something browned or reddened in fat, and Ranhofer's diminutive rissolette signals the bite-sized version. The garnish names in this stretch of the book are a roll-call of the fashionable and the topical - Pompadour, Solferino, and here Renan, generally taken to be Ernest Renan, the French historian and biblical scholar whose fame was at its height in the decades Ranhofer was cooking. The construction is pure professional economy: cooked chicken and rice bound with bechamel and butter, lifted with a spoonful of meat glaze, sieved to velvet and chilled until it can be handled like dough.