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Veal Rissoles

Veal Rissole is a fried meatball made from veal, suet, bread crumbs, and spices, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Veal Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk for 15 minutes, then press dry.

Shape the balls

  1. Mix the veal, suet, soaked bread crumbs, mace, pepper, and salt together.

  2. Beat 1 or 2 eggs and add just enough to moisten the mixture for rolling into balls.

  3. Roll the balls in dry bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in hot fat until golden, about 6 minutes.

  2. Serve with gravy.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Veal cutlets
Provides the main meat body and flavour of the rissole.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender when fried.
Bread crumb
Soaked in milk, it absorbs moisture and helps bind the mixture together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when rolled into balls.

The step that matters

Adding the egg. Too much egg makes the mixture wet and loose, so the balls may not hold their shape in the hot fat. Add just enough to moisten and bind.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, milk, pepper, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, milk, 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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