Skip to main content
Main

Potato Rissoles

A fried potato patty made with mashed potatoes, salt, pepper, parsley, egg, breadcrumbs, and optional tongue or ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the potatoes in a bowl.

  2. Add coarse sea salt, black pepper, and chopped parsley to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball in beaten egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  2. Heat lard in a pan and fry the rissoles for 2 minutes 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.

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

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the mixture, giving the rissoles their soft, moist interior.
Egg
Binds the coating to the potato mixture so the breadcrumbs adhere.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat in the pan and helps the outside turn golden brown.

The step that matters

Fry the rissoles in hot lard. The fat must be hot enough to brown the breadcrumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the rissoles absorb grease and turn soggy before the crust sets.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, parsley, egg, ham):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, parsley, egg, ham. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes