Skip to main content
Main

Potato Rissoles

A fried potato ball made with mashed potatoes, butter, egg yolks, herbs, and spices, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 the potato mixture

  1. Press the mashed potatoes through a vegetable press to make them light and flaky.

  2. Melt the butter and mix it into the potatoes.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks, parsley, cayenne pepper, salt, onion juice, and nutmeg until well combined.

  4. Form the mixture into walnut-sized balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball in beaten egg yolk, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Heat deep fat in a pan until boiling.

  3. Fry the potato balls for 1 minute until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and serve with cream dressing.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the rissole and give a light, flaky interior when pressed.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the potato mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the potato balls for 1 minute until golden brown. Frying in deep fat that is boiling hot browns the crumb coating quickly and crisps it before the soft potato interior overheats or absorbs excess fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, egg, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes