SC - Quince chestnut fritters

[david friedman]

William Bekwith MKA Kornelis Sietsma quoted the Menagier's recipe for
Rissoles and wrote:
>
>Hmm - on re-reading this again, it *does* mention dough - and note [104]
>says :
>[104]A 15th-century English recipe for dried-fruit rissoles gives more
>detail on making them: ...

Here is that recipe; spelling modernized:

Ryschewys Closed and Fried  (Two Fifteenth Century p. 45/97)

Take figs, and grind them small in a mortar with a little oil, and grind
with them cloves and maces; and then take it up into a vessel, and cast
thereto pines, saunders and raisons of corinth and minced dates, powdered
pepper, canel, salt, saffron; then take fine paste of flour and water,
sugar, saffron and salt, and make fair cakes thereof; then roll thine stuff
in thine hand and couch it in the cakes and cut it, and fold them in
ryshews, and fry them up in oil; and serve forth hot.

And here is the recipe of Master Chiquart (Du Fait de Cuisine, 1420), who
never uses one word when ten will do:

51. Again, rissoles: and to give understanding to him who will make them,
according to the quantity of them which he will make let him take a
quantity of fresh pork and cut up into fair and clean pieces and put to
cook, and salt therein; and when his meat is cooked let him draw it out
onto fair and clean tables and remove the skin and all the bones, and then
chop it very small. And arrange that you have figs, prunes, dates, pine
nuts, and candied raisins; remove the stems from the raisins, and the
shells from the pine nuts, and all other things which are not clean; and
then wash all this very well one or two or three times in good white wine
and then put them to drain on fair and clean boards; and then cut the figs
and prunes and dates all into small dice and mix them with your filling.
And then arrange that you have the best cheese which can be made, and then
take a great quantity of parsley which should have the leaves taken off the
stems, and wash it very well and chop it very well in with your cheese; and
then mix this very well with your filling, and eggs also; and take your
spices: white ginger, grains of paradise-and not too much, saffron, and a
great deal of sugar according to the quantity which you are making.  And
then deliver your filling to your pastry-cook, and let him be prepared to
make his fair leaves of pastry to make gold-colored crusts(?); and when
they are made, let him bring them to you and you should have fair white
pork lard to fry them; and when they are fried, you should have gold leaf:
for each gold-colored crust(?) which there is, have one little leaf of gold
to put on top.  And when this comes to the sideboard arrange them on fair
serving dishes and then throw sugar on top.

>
>So maybe I should have made them in pastry after all :)
>
I think when Menagier says "and make your rissoles" he is assuming you know
what rissoles are like, just as the English recipe assumes you know what
"fold them in ryshews" means (I make a circle of dough, put filling on
off-center, fold my circle in half and seal--but I have no idea if this is
right).

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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