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Pork Rissoles

A fried pork patty made with boiled pork, seasonings, egg, bread crumbs, and ghee or dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,372 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pork Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold boiled pork finely.

  2. Season the minced pork with pepper, coarse sea salt, minced mint leaves, and minced onions.

Shape and fry

  1. Combine the mixture with 1 beaten egg and enough bread crumbs to form a dough.

  2. Shape the mixture into small rissoles.

  3. Fry the rissoles in ghee or dripping until golden brown.

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. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the minced pork and crumbs so the mixture holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the dough enough body to shape without falling apart.
Ghee or dripping
Conducts heat and fat for frying, browning the outside of the rissoles.

The step that matters

Fry the rissoles until golden brown. Frying in hot fat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour and a crisp crust. Too low a heat lets the rissoles soak up fat and steam rather than brown.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, onion, egg, bread, ghee):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, onion, egg, bread, ghee. 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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