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Rissoles of Chicken

A fried pastry roll filled with minced chicken and ham, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Chicken and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Rissoles of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Finely mince the remains of a cold chicken and half the quantity of lean, cold ham.

  2. Mix them well, adding enough white sauce to moisten the mixture.

Shape the rissoles

  1. Roll out light pastry dough to about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut the dough into pieces, each 1 inch by 2 inches.

  3. Place a small amount of the chicken and ham mixture on the center of half the pieces.

  4. Cover with the other halves, pressing the edges together to form little rolls.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat plenty of lard or other frying medium in a frying pan until boiling hot.

  2. Fry the rissoles until golden brown, about 1-2 minutes.

  3. Drain well and serve immediately on a 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. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Ham + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main savoury filling, bound together by the white sauce.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling alongside the chicken.
White sauce
Moistens the minced filling so it holds together and stays tender.
Light pastry dough
Forms the thin golden shell that encloses the filling and crisps when fried.
Lard
Frying medium that browns the pastry quickly and gives it a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Fry in very hot fat. The fat must be fully boiling hot before the rissoles go in. Hot fat seals the pastry quickly, so it browns and crisps rather than absorbing grease and turning soggy. Draining well afterward keeps the crust crisp.

“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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