Why it works: Fish and meat work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Rissoles
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and fry
Lay thin slices of cold fish, meat, fowl, game, cheese, or forcemeat between two layers of very thin pastry.
Seal the edges well to prevent filling from escaping.
Fry the patties in hot lard or fat until golden brown.
Serve
Serve garnished with crisped parsley.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Fish + meattop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together479 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Fish + cheesetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together135 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Meat + cheesetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together564 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,341 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,040 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Very thin pastry
- Encloses the filling and crisps to a golden, sealed casing when fried.
- Hot lard or fat
- Conducts heat to the pastry, browning and crisping its surface as it fries.
The step that matters
Sealing the edges. If the edges are not sealed well, the filling can escape into the hot fat during frying, making the rissoles greasy and fragile. A firm seal keeps the filling enclosed while the pastry cooks.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, meat, cheese):
- Thymefits better
- Capersfits better
- Pepperfits about as well
- Parsleythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against fish, meat, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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