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Potato Rissoles

A fried potato dish shaped into rissole forms, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg yolks, cream, and parsley.

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 the potato mixture

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until tender, then drain.

  2. Rub the potatoes through a wire sieve into a bowl.

  3. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg yolks, cream, and chopped parsley; mix until smooth.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into rissole shapes.

  2. Dip each rissole in egg.

  3. Coat each rissole with breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the rissoles in clarified butter or dripping until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fried rissoles on a cloth.

  3. Serve on a folded napkin or paper.

  4. Garnish with fried parsley.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main bulk and soft, absorbent body of the rissoles.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness so the shapes hold together.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the potato mixture.
Clarified butter or dripping
Conducts heat and encourages a golden brown, crisp outside when frying.

The step that matters

Frying the rissoles until golden brown. If the fat is too cool, the coated rissoles absorb grease and turn heavy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre heats through. Steady, moderate heat cooks the inside while the crumb crust turns golden.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

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