Name: Rissoles, Potato
Ingredients: potatoes; coarse sea salt; cayenne pepper; parsley; shallot; egg; fresh butter

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rissoles, Potato

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes until soft and floury.
Mash the potatoes and season with coarse sea salt and a little cayenne pepper.
Finely mince the parsley and shallot, then mix them into the mashed potatoes.
Bind the mixture with an egg, then roll it into balls.
Fry the balls in fresh butter over medium heat until golden brown.

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.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + shallottop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together272 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 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

Swap the potato

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

Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, shallot, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.