Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni Rissoles

A fried pastry shell filled with a macaroni and cheese mixture.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Macaroni Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni until tender, then drain and rinse in cold water.

  2. Cut the drained macaroni into very thin rings.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour and milk, cooking until thickened.

  3. Add the mustard, salt, pepper, macaroni, and cheese.

Shape the rissoles

  1. Roll out the short crust as thin as possible.

  2. Cut the rolled dough into small rounds.

  3. Place a teaspoon of the mixture on one half of each pastry round.

  4. Wet the edges of the pastry round.

  5. Fold the pastry over to seal.

  6. Dip the rissoles in beaten egg.

  7. Coat the rissoles with broken vermicelli.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the rissoles in hot oil for 4 minutes until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fried rissoles on paper towels.

  3. Serve with fried 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 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

What each ingredient does

Short crust
Forms the thin pastry casing that encloses the filling and crisps when fried.
Butter
Enriches the filling and forms the base of the white sauce with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that binds the filling together.
Milk
Liquid that gelatinises with the flour to make a smooth, thick binding sauce.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness to the filling, and helps it bind.
Macaroni
Provides the bulk and chewy texture of the filling.

The step that matters

Seal the pastry edges well. Wet edges help the pastry stick together; if they are not sealed, the filling can leak out during frying and the rissoles can open up in hot oil.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cheese, milk, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cheese, milk, pepper. 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

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes