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Fritadelles, Alexandra
Skin a two-and-a-half-pound tender chicken, pick off all the meat, finely chop it with two ounces raw, lean veal and place in a bowl. Season with a level teaspoon salt, a saltspoon each cayenne pepper, grated nutmeg and ground mixed allspice, gradually pour in two gills thick cream, and sharply stir with a wooden spoon while adding. Divide the preparation into six even parts, lightly roll in freshly prepared bread crumbs and give them nice cake forms. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, place in it the fritadelles, one beside another, and slowly fry for eight minutes on each side. Remove, pour a Bearnaise sauce on a hot dish, arrange the fritadelles over and serve.
A raw forcemeat of chicken and veal bound with cream, formed into cakes and fried gently — essentially a French quenelle mixture treated as a croquette. The hinge is heat control: the cakes must cook through slowly without browning hard, or the cream-bound interior stays raw while the crumb burns.
- GillsTwo gills is one cup of heavy cream. That is a generous amount for roughly a pound of meat and gives a very soft, almost mousseline mixture.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Applied literally to cayenne that is a lot of heat; an eighth is closer to modern taste, and the nutmeg and allspice can stay as written.
- Mixed allspice'Ground mixed allspice' here may mean a ground blend in the older sense — allspice with cloves, mace, cinnamon — rather than the pimento berry alone. British 'mixed spice', or a pinch each of allspice and mace, is a reasonable substitute either way.
- Yield of meatA 2 1/2 lb chicken picked clean gives about 1 lb to 1 1/4 lb of raw meat, dark and light together. Save the skin and bones for stock.
- ChoppingThe recipe asks for the meat finely chopped, which in this period means by hand with two knives. A food processor works if you pulse the meat cold and stop before it becomes a paste, then beat in the cream by hand as directed.
- Chill before formingThe recipe omits this and it matters. A cup of cream in a pound of meat produces a mixture too slack to shape; refrigerate it 30 minutes to an hour, and keep your hands and the crumbs cold when forming the cakes.
- FryingEight minutes a side is not an exaggeration for raw poultry forcemeat about an inch thick — it is there to cook the centre, not to brown. Keep the pan at medium-low, add more butter as it is absorbed, and check that the middle reaches 165F.
- The sauceBearnaise is not optional here; the cakes are deliberately mild and the tarragon-vinegar sharpness is the whole point of the plate. Make it while the fritadelles fry and hold it warm off direct heat.
- ServingSix cakes serve three as a main course or six as an entree in the older sense, following soup and fish.
Fritadelle is one of many spellings of a word that travelled widely — frikadelle in Germany and Denmark, fricadelle in France and Belgium, frikadel in the Netherlands and, by way of Dutch trade, Indonesia. All describe a small fried cake of chopped meat, and the root is generally traced to the same family as Italian frittella, a little fried thing. The second half of the title follows the French kitchen's habit of attaching a proper name to a fixed treatment: an a la Alexandra garnish, usually a pale dish under a rich butter or egg sauce, and said to be named for one of several royal Alexandras. What the recipe does show is a well-staffed professional kitchen at work — a whole chicken bought, skinned and picked by hand for a dish that serves three, with the carcass presumed to go into the stockpot.