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Game, Rissoles of

A meatball made from ground game, breadcrumbs, mushrooms, butter, and egg yolk, fried and served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Game, Rissoles of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the meat in a mortar with salt, pepper, nutmeg, bread crumbs, mushrooms, butter, and egg yolk.

  2. Enclose the mixture in pastry or form into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dredge the balls with flour.

  2. Dip the balls in beaten egg.

  3. Coat the balls with bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the balls in hot butter or lard until lightly browned.

  5. Drain the fried balls on blotting paper.

Serve

  1. Serve the balls piled high on a napkin.

  2. Garnish the served balls with parsley.

  3. Serve the balls with brown sauce.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Game
Forms the main body of the rissole and gives its rich, meaty flavour.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and bind the meat into a tender mixture.
Egg yolk
Binds the filling together so it holds its shape when formed and fried.
Butter
Adds richness to the filling and browns the outside when the balls are fried.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in hot butter or lard until lightly browned. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy instead of crisping and browning. Frying too long can dry out the cooked meat inside.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, milk, mushroom, butter, 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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