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Chicken Rissoles

Chicken rissole is a small cake made from chopped chicken, breadcrumbs, broth, seasonings, and butter, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the cold baked chicken and chop it finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs and the heated chicken broth or hot water to moisten the crumbs thoroughly.

  3. Add the chopped chicken, salt, pepper, sage, and butter to the bowl and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small cakes and dust them lightly with flour.

  2. Fry the cakes in a pan until they are light 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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold baked chicken
Provides the main body and protein of the cakes.
Dried bread crumbs
Absorb the broth and bind the chicken so the cakes hold their shape.
Chicken broth or hot water
Moistens the crumbs so they soften and bind evenly with the chicken.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the cakes brown.
Flour
Dusted on the outside, it helps the cakes develop a light brown crust in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until light brown. Browning depends on surface dryness and steady heat. Overcrowding the pan or flipping too early can steam the cakes instead of browning them, and they may crumble if not set first.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, pepper, butter, flour. 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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