14th c French pasta recipe.
Rissoles On A Meat Day are seasonable from St. Remy’s Day (October 1). Take a pork thigh and remove all the fat so that none is left, then put the lean meat in a pot with plenty of salt; and when it is almost cooked, take it out and have hard-cooked eggs, and chop the whites and yolks, and elsewhere chop up your meat very small, then mix eggs and meat together, and sprinkle powdered spices on it, then put in pastry and fry in its own grease. And note that this is a proper stuffing for pig; and any time the cooks shop at the butcher’s for pig-stuffing : but always, when stuffing pigs, it is good to add old good cheese. – Le Menagier de Paris (Janet Hinson, trans.)
My Version
This dish resembles fried raviolis. For the pastry for this dish I used commercially bought wonton wrappers. The dough for the wrappers is a simple egg, flour, water and salt dough. The size and thickness of the wrappers was perfect for this dish and saved many hours of rolling and cutting pastry for the dish. I did not have enough pork fat to render and use to fry the rissoles so I used lard instead.
For the filling I cooked a pork loin that had been rubbed with salt and rested for about an hour before cooking. It was then cooked in a 350 degree oven until it reached a medium temperature. While the meat was cooking eggs were boiled, peeled and chopped small. The meat was also chopped small after cooking. The original recipe doesn’t say what spices were used so I chose to use grains of paradise, ginger and nutmeg. The filling was added to the wrappers which were then sealed with water. The rissoles were fried on both sides in a couple inches of oil until golden and crisp.
Sources
Le Menagier de Paris (France, 1393 – Janet Hinson, trans.)
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html