Skip to main content
Main

Rissoles, or Croquettes

A fried patty made from minced cold meat, ham, and seasonings bound with butter, flour, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rissoles, or Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Finely mince the cold meat and ham.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, nutmeg, onion, and parsley.

Make the binder

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then gradually stir in the flour.

  2. Add the milk and stock, cooking until the flour is no longer raw.

  3. Stir in the minced meat, bread crumbs, beaten eggs, sauce, and lemon peel.

  4. Cool the mixture before shaping into balls or slightly flattened rolls.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each shaped rissole in egg and roll in bread crumbs.

  2. Heat lard in a saucepan until boiling, then drop in the rissoles.

  3. Fry until golden brown 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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the rissoles their savoury flavour.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries the flour, adding richness to the binder.
Flour
Thickens the milk and stock into a sauce that holds the filling together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, holding the shape firm.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture in the filling and form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the sauce, keeping the filling tender.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to hold its shape and may crack or slump. Cooling lets the starch-thickened binder firm up so the rissoles keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, nutmeg, onion, parsley, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, nutmeg, onion, parsley, butter, 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.

More rissoles recipes

Chicken 28Potato 24Beef 19Veal 12Meat 11Lentil 9 See all 25 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes