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Bondinettes of Meat

Small pastry pockets filled with cold meat, potatoes, onions, parsley, and seasonings.

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 ↓

Bondinettes of Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the chopped onion in the butter until soft.

  2. Add the potatoes, meat, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  3. Mix thoroughly with the yolk of one egg.

Shape the bondinettes

  1. Roll out the pastry very thinly.

  2. Cut out rounds with a cutter.

  3. Place a teaspoonful of the meat mixture in the center of each round.

  4. Moisten the edges of the pastry.

  5. Seal them firmly.

  6. Beat the remaining egg in a plate.

  7. Coat each one with egg.

  8. Coat with bread crumbs or vermicelli.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the savory filling that gives each bondinette its main flavor and body.
Cold potatoes
Adds bulk and softness to the filling, helping it hold together when mixed.
Butter
Softens the onion and adds richness to the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling together and, beaten, coat the pastry so it browns when fried.
Short crust pastry
Encloses the filling and becomes crisp and golden when fried.

The step that matters

Seal them firmly. If the edges are not moistened and pressed well, the seal can open in the hot fat, letting filling leak out and the pastry absorb oil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, butter, egg, parsley, pepper, bread. 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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