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Rissoles

A beef patty made with onions, lemon rind, bread, salt, pepper, and eggs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Rissoles

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the beef and mix with chopped onions.

  2. Grate in the lemon rind and add bread.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then mix thoroughly.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Dip in egg and sprinkle with bread crust.

  3. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main bulk and meaty structure of the rissoles.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the coating set during frying.
Bread
Absorbs moisture and softens the mixture, keeping the rissoles tender.
Onions
Add moisture and sweetness, and flavour the meat through the mixture.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma that lifts the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the rissoles absorb oil, turn greasy, and may stay underdone inside.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, bread, pepper, 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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