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Rissoles. No. 2

A dish of diced chicken mixed with white sauce, bread crumbs, and eggs, formed into patties and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rissoles. No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the fleshy parts and breasts of the fowls into small, equal-sized dice.

  2. Combine the diced meat with white sauce and reduce until thick and stiff.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then cut it into pieces and shape them like corks.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the pieces in fine bread crumbs, then dip in beaten eggs mixed with a little salt, and roll in bread crumbs again.

  2. If the pieces are not stiff enough, repeat the dipping and rolling process.

  3. Fry the rissoles in hot lard until light brown, then drain and wipe off excess grease.

  4. Serve 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.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls
Provide the meat that forms the body of the rissoles.
White sauce
Binds the diced meat and, when reduced, makes the mixture thick enough to shape.
Eggs
Form a coating that helps the bread crumbs adhere and brown during frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Create a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the crumb coating while adding richness.

The step that matters

Reducing the meat and white sauce until stiff. If the mixture is too loose, the pieces will not hold their cork shape and may break or fall apart in the coating and frying. Cooling it fully before shaping lets it firm up enough to hold its form.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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