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Gravy for Rissoles

A savory gravy made from rissoles meat trimmings, onion, butter, water, mace, parsley, peppercorns, toasted bread, flour, ketchup, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Gravy for Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat skin, trimmings, and bones into small pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the meat, minced onion, and butter over medium heat until lightly browned.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Add boiling water, mace, parsley, peppercorns, and toasted bread. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with a little cold water.

Season and serve

  1. Stir in ketchup and coarse sea salt, then boil once more 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Meat skin, trimmings, and bones
Release savoury flavour and gelatin into the liquid as they simmer.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the onion and meat brown lightly at the start.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid so the gravy becomes body-rich and coats the spoon.
Toasted bread
Adds a toasty aroma and a little body to the simmering liquid.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to round out the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it must be whisked smoothly into cold water first. Starch then swells when the gravy heats, thickening it evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, butter, parsley, bread, flour, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, butter, parsley, bread, flour, ketchup. 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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