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Veal Rissoles

A savory dish of finely chopped veal and ham formed into balls, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the veal and ham very finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the stock and let it boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Mix in the chopped meat, seasoning, and let it cool completely.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls, brush with beaten egg, and cover with bread-crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Serve 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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Cooked veal
Provides the main meat body and flavour of the rissole filling.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the stock into a binding sauce for the filling.
Stock or cream
Adds moisture and liquid that, once thickened, holds the chopped meat together.
Egg
Brushed on as a glue so the bread-crumbs adhere and brown in frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before shaping. A warm, loose filling is soft and sticky, so the balls can break apart or leak during coating and frying. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce set and firm up enough to hold its shape.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, butter, flour, cream, pepper, 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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