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Rissoles of Cooked Fish

A patty made from shredded cooked fish mixed with breadcrumbs, butter, onion, parsley, egg, and seasonings, then fried and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rissoles of Cooked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove all the meat from the fish bones and pound it or shred it with a fork.

  2. Mix the fish with an equal amount of bread crumbs and some butter.

  3. Season with the chopped onion, parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Add enough beaten egg to bind the mixture and form small flat cakes.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the rissoles in butter or lard until golden brown.

  2. In the frying pan, add flour to absorb the grease, stir in a little water, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Pour the gravy around the rissoles and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked light fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the rissoles.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so the cakes hold their shape.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture together so it can be formed into flat cakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the rissoles brown in the pan.
Flour
Absorbs the frying grease and thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Binding the mixture with egg. Too little egg leaves the cakes crumbly and likely to break apart in the pan, while too much makes them wet and soft. Add it gradually until the mixture just holds together when shaped.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, parsley, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, parsley, pepper, egg, flour. 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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