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Beef Rissoles

Beef rissoles are fried patties made from mashed potatoes, minced roast beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Beef Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. Open the tin of beef and remove the fat for frying.

Shape and coat

  1. Mince the meat and onion finely and add to the potatoes with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Blend the mixture with one egg and beat the other egg in a separate bowl.

  3. Shape the mixture into small rolls, dip them in the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the rissoles in the reserved fat until golden brown.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 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

Roast beef
Provides the main meat flavour and the bulk of the rissoles.
Potatoes
Mashed potato binds the mixture and keeps the filling moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture, and the beaten egg helps the crumbs stick to the rolls.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. Frying in hot fat browns the crumb coating through Maillard browning and seals the outside so the rissoles stay moist inside. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumbs absorb oil and turn soggy, and the rissoles can break apart.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, bread, sauce, pepper. 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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