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Potato Rissoles

A fried patty made from mashed potatoes, egg, and breadcrumbs, optionally flavored with parsley, tongue, ham, or onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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. In a bowl, combine mashed potatoes, salt, pepper, and parsley if using.

  2. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Coat and fry

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

  2. Heat lard in a pan over medium-high heat.

  3. Fry the rissoles for about 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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

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 rissoles and give them a soft, moist interior.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick to each ball.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot lard.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Fry the rissoles for about 2 minutes until golden brown. The crumb coating browns quickly in hot fat, so the pan must be hot enough to crisp the outside before the interior overheats or the coating burns. Watching for golden colour shows when the exterior has set and browned.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

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