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Turkey Rissoles

Turkey Rissole is a small puff pastry-wrapped meatball made with minced turkey, bread crumbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Turkey Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove skin and sinew from the turkey and mince the meat finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine minced turkey, grated tongue or ham, bread crumbs, clarified butter or bacon, chopped onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Mix thoroughly and bind with the egg yolk.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out puff pastry thinly and cut into rounds.

  2. Place a spoonful of the meat mixture on each round, moisten the edges, and fold to form a ball.

  3. Dip each ball in beaten egg and fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  4. Drain on a sieve and serve on a neatly folded napkin.

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

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving the rissole its main meaty texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the minced filling so it holds its shape.
Clarified butter or bacon fat
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the cooked filling from drying out.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder, helping the mixture hold together when shaped.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky outer casing that browns when fried.
Tongue or ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the balls. If the moistened edges are not pressed firmly closed, the filling can leak out into the hot fat and the pastry may open while frying, so seal each ball fully before dipping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, ham, bread, butter, pepper, nutmeg, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, ham, bread, butter, pepper, nutmeg, 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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