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Chicken Rissoles

Small pastry turnovers filled with minced cooked chicken, ham and mushrooms in a thick sauce, then breadcrumbed and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute, then gradually add the stock, stirring until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the chicken, ham, mushrooms, cream, seasoning, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a dish and let it cool.

Shape the rissoles

  1. Roll out the pastry thinly and cut into rounds.

  2. Wet the edges of each round with egg, place a teaspoon of the mixture in the center, fold over, and press to seal.

Coat, fry and serve

  1. Brush the tops with egg, coat in breadcrumbs, and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Serve on a dish with fried parsley for garnish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

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.

  1. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main cooked meat filling that gives each rissole its substance.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps the flour cook into a smooth base.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that, thickened with flour, forms the moist body of the filling.
Egg
Seals the pastry edges and, brushed on top, promotes browning in the frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp coating that turns golden brown when fried in hot oil.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before shaping. A warm filling softens the pastry and melts its fat, so the rounds tear and the edges fail to seal, letting filling leak out during frying.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, mushroom, butter, cream, ham, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, mushroom, butter, cream, ham, egg. 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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