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Fish, Rissoles of

Fish rissole made with cold cooked fish, bread crumbs, onion, butter, egg yolks, pepper, salt, wrapped in puff pastry and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish, Rissoles of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Weigh the cold cooked fish after removing bones and skin.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of grated bread crumbs, minced onion, melted butter, egg yolks, pepper, and salt to the fish.

Shape the rissoles

  1. Make puff paste, roll it thin, and cut into 2-inch squares.

  2. Place about 1 teaspoon of the fish mixture on each square and fold over.

  3. Wet the edges of the dough to help them adhere.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling fat after egging and covering with bread crumbs.

  2. Garnish with fried parsley and serve.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked fish
Forms the main body of the filling, giving the rissoles their flavour.
Grated bread crumbs
Absorb moisture in the filling so it holds together rather than becoming soggy.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling together and enrich it, helping it set when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the filling moist and tender.
Puff paste
Forms the crisp, flaky pastry shell that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges before frying. Wetting the dough edges helps them stick together. If the seal fails, the filling can leak into the hot fat and the rissoles may open or burst while frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, egg, pepper, parsley. 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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