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Rissoles of Cold Meat

A fried ball of cold meat, onions, eggs, and breadcrumbs, seasoned with nutmeg, lemon rind, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rissoles of Cold Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Finely chop the cold meat, removing any fat.

  2. Chop the onion and fry it in the frying fat until golden.

  3. Strain the onion and add it to the meat along with nutmeg, lemon rind, pepper, salt, and about 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs slightly and stir them into the meat mixture with the stock.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls or desired shapes using a tablespoon.

  2. Coat the balls in egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling fat until golden brown.

  4. Drain and serve on a hot dish, garnished with 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the rissoles and carries the flavour of the dish.
Eggs
Bind the meat mixture and form a coating that helps the crumbs stick and brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the shaped rissoles a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma once softened and browned in fat.
Stock
Adds moisture so the mixture holds together without drying out.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the rissoles absorb grease, turn soggy and may break apart before the crust sets.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, egg, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, egg, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, bread. 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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