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Rissoles of Potatoes

Small potato balls mixed with pickles, parsley, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried until golden.

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 ↓

Rissoles of Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine mashed potatoes, pickles, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the egg and mix until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Roll the balls in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in dripping or butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Place on a dish and garnish with curled 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the rissole and give it a soft, tender interior.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the rissoles hold their shape when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.
Pickles
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the potato.

The step that matters

Fry in dripping or butter until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the bread-crumb coating through the Maillard reaction while the interior heats through. Too high a heat burns the crumbs before the centre is hot, and too low a heat makes the coating greasy and soft.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

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