Skip to main content
Main

Pancakes, Rissoles

A pancake filled with minced veal or beef, seasoned with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pancakes, Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Prepare a pint of pancake batter, substituting pepper and salt for sugar and nutmeg.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced veal or beef with coarse sea salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and grated lemon rind.

Cook and fill

  1. Heat oil or butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour a portion of the batter into the pan and cook until set and lightly browned.

  3. Place ½ cup of the meat mixture in the center of the pancake.

  4. Fold the ends and sides over the filling to enclose it.

  5. Cook for a few more minutes to heat the meat through.

  6. Transfer each rissole to an inverted sieve to drain.

Serve

  1. Serve the rissoles on a hot napkin, garnished with 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Pancake batter
Forms the thin pancake wrapper that encloses the filling and sets when cooked.
Veal or beef
Provides the savoury meat filling that gives the rissoles their main body and flavour.
Oil or butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the pancake.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus flavour that brightens the rich meat filling.

The step that matters

Folding the pancake around the filling. The filling must be fully enclosed and the pancake cooked long enough after folding to heat the cold meat through. Otherwise the centre stays cold or the wrapper may split and leak filling into the pan.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, lemon, butter, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, butter, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes