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Chicken Rissoles

Chicken rissole is a fried ball made from minced chicken, ham, breadcrumbs, onion, butter, spices, and white sauce, wrapped in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the flesh from a cold chicken and mince it finely.

  2. For every ¼ pound of meat, add 1 ounce of lean ham, 1 ounce of bread crumbs, 1 small boiled and chopped onion, 1 tablespoon of clarified butter, ¼ teaspoon of salt, ⅛ teaspoon of pepper, and 2-3 grates of nutmeg.

  3. Mix thoroughly and moisten with a little stiff white sauce.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then form it into balls.

Cover and fry

  1. Roll out the pastry thinly and cover the balls with it.

  2. Fry the covered balls in hot fat until they are light brown, about 10 minutes.

  3. Drain thoroughly from the fat and serve piled high on a napkin, garnished with fried parsley.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the rissoles their main savoury flavour.
Stiff white sauce
Adds moisture so the minced mixture holds together without drying out.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the minced meat into a firm mixture.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and fat, keeping the filling tender and well flavoured.
Lean ham
Adds a salty, savoury depth that complements the chicken.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before forming the balls. A warm, moist mixture is soft and sticky, so it is hard to shape and may slump or split. Cooling firms the fat and binders, letting the balls hold their shape in the hot fat.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, bread, onion, butter, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, bread, onion, butter, pepper, nutmeg. 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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