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Chicken Rissoles

A fried pastry roll filled with seasoned chicken and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and stir in flour to form a paste.

  2. Add milk and stir until thick and smooth.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and onion juice, then mix in cream and chicken.

  4. Cook for a moment longer, then set aside to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Roll out puff pastry scraps into a thin sheet and cut into 3x4 inch pieces.

  2. Mold the chicken mixture into rolls about the thickness of a little finger and 3 inches long.

  3. Enclose each roll in a piece of pastry, wetting the edges to seal.

  4. Dip each rissole in beaten egg and roll in breadcrumbs.

Fry

  1. Heat the fat in a deep saucepan until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the rissoles in batches for about 4 minutes until golden brown, adjusting the heat as needed.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the flour paste and adds flavour to the white sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the liquid that thickens with flour into a smooth, binding white sauce.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling, bound into the sauce so the rolls hold their shape.
Beaten egg
Acts as a glue so the breadcrumbs stick and form a crisp coating.
Fine breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot fat.

The step that matters

Frying in smoking hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the pastry absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden. Too much heat browns the outside before the pastry cooks through. Frying in small batches keeps the fat temperature steady.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, cream, chicken, egg. 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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