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Beef Rissoles

Beef rissoles are shaped meat patties coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Beef Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Add onion, parsley, and seasonings to the minced meat.

  2. Make a thick brown gravy with the remaining ingredients.

  3. Once the gravy is cooked, add the meat mixture.

  4. Cool the mixture.

  5. Shape the cooled mixture into cones or cylinders.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the shaped meat in breadcrumbs.

  2. Dip the breadcrumb-coated meat in egg.

  3. Roll the meat again in breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry the coated meat in deep fat at 390°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  5. Drain the rissoles.

Serve

  1. Garnish the rissoles.

  2. Serve the rissoles with tomato sauce.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 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

Minced cooked meat
Forms the body of the rissoles and gives them their main flavour.
Flour
Thickens the fat and stock into the gravy that binds the meat mixture.
Fat
Cooks with the flour to form the base of the thick brown gravy.
Stock
Adds liquid and savoury flavour to the gravy, keeping the mixture moist.
Grated onion
Adds aroma and flavour to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A cooled, firmer mixture holds its cone or cylinder shape during coating and frying. A warm, soft mixture can slump or crack, so the rissoles may lose their form in the hot fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, pepper, 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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