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Rissoles

A puff pastry turnover filled with minced fowl or veal, garlic, lemon, and gravy, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Rissoles

Why it works: Garlic and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,893 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix the minced fowl or veal with garlic, lemon peel, white pepper, salt, mace, lemon juice, and gravy.

Assemble

  1. Cut puff pastry into 3-inch rounds using a tin cutter.

  2. Place some of the mixture on one pastry round, wet the edges, and cover with another round.

  3. Press the edges gently to seal, brush with beaten egg, and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  4. For a larger version, cut pastry like a large breakfast plate, place the filling in the center, wet the edges, gather into a pear shape, brush with egg, and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the assembled pastry in boiling clarified beef dripping until light brown.

  2. Drain the fried pastry on a sieve before serving.

  3. Serve garnished 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp outer casing that puffs and browns when fried.
Cold fowl or veal
Provides the main body and savoury bulk of the filling.
Egg
Brushed on the pastry to help the bread crumb coating adhere and brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the outside when fried.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savouriness so the filling stays juicy.
Clarified beef dripping
Fat for frying that browns the pastry evenly and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges before frying. Wet edges pressed firmly together keep the filling inside the pastry. Gaps let the filling leak into the hot fat and make the rissole greasy and uneven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, garlic, lemon, white pepper, egg, bread, beef):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, garlic, lemon, white pepper, egg, bread, beef. 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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